Eh, I would happily go for it. I get that "the interview is stressful", but if you do enough of them, they're not that stressful. And in my experience, stuff

Eh, I would happily go for it. I get that "the interview is stressful", but if you do enough of them, they're not that stressful. And in my experience, stuff like this is really good at identifying some assholes. I can't find references, but it is based on research, and is applied in other scenarios. It is in fact often recommended you do a version of this prior to marrying someone: Usually some physical activity is picked that both of you suck at, and the goal is not to achieve it, but to see how well you work together in unfamiliar terrain. It's not a great sign if failure to succeed results in a nasty argument ("We could have solved this if you'd done it my way!") As always, the cost of a toxic hire is much greater than missing out on a good engineer. If this has even a 50% success rate at detecting jerks, it's worth it.