'm not a big fan of "brain teaser" questions, but the logic of this rant isn't very solid. It's a little like complaining that the Olympics are completely stupid and irrelevant because in reality I never need to pole-vault or whatever. Difficult but arbitrary challenges can often be a reasonable gauge of strength and ability.
They certainly do measure abilities in a certain area, the question is whether that measures whether knowing why manhole covers are round can add value to an organization in the way that is currently desired for that position.
I don't see what connection stupid puzzles have to turning a spec or a vague, contradictory set of requests from a user into working code and working with other people.
Judging from friends who used to compete in mathematical olympiads, my educated guess is that the people who sail through the brainteasers are the ones who practice working on them (the way you prepare for a mathematical olympiad is to solve old mathematical olympiad problems).
Do you want to hire someone who spends their spare time working on job interview puzzles? Do you want someone who's delighted by answering "why are manhole covers round?" with the pointless, trite response of "because manholes are round!", which only begs the question? I swear to god those Joel on Software forum people get off on this crap.
Microsoft's problem is that you get fired if you look at open source code, so talking about neat open source side projects you did the way more enlightened companies like ThoughtWorks do is completely out of the question, which shows that they have much deeper problems than just figuring out the right interview questions.
It's a little like complaining that the Olympics are completely stupid and irrelevant because in reality I never need to pole-vault
I don't see that at all. It's more like complaining that pole-vaulting would be a stupid and irrelevant way to screen, say, firefighters. Which indeed it would. And that has nothing to do with calling the Olympics themselves irrelevant.
Actually, Olympic pole-vaulters would probably make much better fireman than the average person -- think of the strength and determination required to become an Olympic pole-vaulter. Plus they could just pole-vault in and out of burning buildings :)
