I'm sure somebody can provide a more comprehensive history, but I'm pretty sure it started with Microsoft being cargo-culted. Then when Microsoft stopped being as cool, everybody started copying Google and how they did interviews.

Microsoft did brain teasers like "How many ping pong balls fit on a bus?" questions. Then Google copied that to start. Google later realized that performance on these questions didn't predict performance on the job and developed a more data-driven approach that you see today (leetcode style) that other companies copy today.

I'm in the camp that interviewing loops all have tradeoffs, but if you're a smaller company you can't afford to copy how big tech giants interview candidates. Their funnels are much larger, and they can afford to skip on potentially quality candidates.

>>Microsoft did brain teasers like "How many ping pong balls fit on a bus?" questions. Then Google copied that to start. Google later realized that performance on these questions didn't predict performance on the job and developed a more data-driven approach that you see today (leetcode style) that other companies copy today.

I'm curious how did they realize that ping pong bus questions didn't predict performance. Was that just based on negative candidate feedback or they pulled the spreadsheets to realize they are below the hiring quotas.