I worked in Russia and used to think this way too. But once we managed to hire person how couldn't code. At all. He was intelligent during the interview, talked

I worked in Russia and used to think this way too. But once we managed to hire person how couldn't code. At all. He was intelligent during the interview, talked his way through system design section. But during the probation period he basically couldn't do anything, even simple stuff. After that I started to block any candidate, who couldn't provide code solution for at least simple problem.