Every detail you just described exactly mirrors my experience. The VP of engineering, the math puzzle I hadn't seen before, trying to solve it in a Google doc r

Every detail you just described exactly mirrors my experience. The VP of engineering, the math puzzle I hadn't seen before, trying to solve it in a Google doc rather than with code I could compile. All of it. I did end up solving it, but I wasn't happy with the solution and neither was he, with good reason of course, but it was one of those problems I easily could have solved if given the proper time to work on it rather than digitally whiteboarding it for 20 minutes in a high pressure situation. A quick and dirty solution is all you should expect from working on a never before seen problem in 20 minutes on paper without a compiler. I came away feeling as though their process was more broken than my performance. Doubtless, I could have done better. But it just felt so strange to be washed out after four other engineers thought I was qualified.