I don't think it's that complex. I think they're just cargo-culting. Technical interviews were designed to test certain things (brainpower, grasp of fundamental

I don't think it's that complex. I think they're just cargo-culting. Technical interviews were designed to test certain things (brainpower, grasp of fundamental data structures) and not other things (workflow, ability to write out large volumes of trivial code). I think companies just copy that and don't realise what they're really testing for.