I care about three things in a candidate: Code Quality Productivity Communication ... pretty much in that order. Brain teasers test none of those things (ma

I care about three things in a candidate: Code Quality Productivity Communication ... pretty much in that order. Brain teasers test none of those things (maybe a some communication) I've never met a coder that couldn't eventually figure out a way to hack the code to do what the PMs want. But I have met a lot of coders that take way too long and/or produce horrific code that is a buggy maintenance nightmare. Those people often do ok on brain teasers (or at least do well enough that the interviewer doesn't feel like he can give negative feedback). A more important point is that brain teasers are a waste of time compared to a million other things you could be doing with the candidate to determine their aptitude, like actually writing code to solve a problem.