Honestly, as someone who's done a lot of hiring and interviewing over the years I don't hate this concept (specifically the open questions), but oh god this is

Honestly, as someone who's done a lot of hiring and interviewing over the years I don't hate this concept (specifically the open questions), but oh god this is such a bad implementation of it. A handful of open-ended questions would be fine, allowing for a wide variance in detail and depth. And even time boxing it, in terms of telling the candidate not to spend too much time on it unless they really feel like they have a lot to say. I would much rather ask these sorts of questions this way than in a live interview, where only a very narrow set of personality types are able to come up with good answers and you pretty much have to accept that good candidates will sometimes answer poorly. And then I think the actual interviews can start off on a more informed footing, with some things to talk about. A lot of time in short interviews is wasted just getting on the same page, especially about softer questions like this. I agree with some sibling commentary that it's good that people are experimenting in general, because tech hiring process right now is abysmal. It's rarely anything but an excuse to hire people like the people you've already hired, and so inevitably fails to ever really grow a team beyond its initial limitations.