You seem to be talking about a very different kind of interview than what anybody else here is talking about. The kind that is "just a conversation" is still more difficult than you're making it out to be for a lot of people, but it's definitely easier than the full day of whiteboard coding and no open ended conversation style that every big company uses and every wanna-be big company parrots.

I agree, though it can be a little jarring going into what you expect to be a whiteboard interview, and just answering questions verbally. Its nice, certainly, but if you're not expecting it (and why would you, given the odds) it can take a bit to get your footing.

Actually, I just finished a couple of weeks of interviews looking for a new job. I actually found that a lot of time I would talk through my solution to their whiteboard problem and by the time I'd talked it through--really just planning for myself before writing it out--they wouldn't wait for me to write it out. I'd explained it with enough clarity that actually writing it out would have just been a waste of time.

In other words, we've set up pipelines that reward those who can talk well, rather than those who can do well.

That might be an unfair characterization. But only just.

A different characterization is that we are looking for those that think well. Both talking and code on whiteboards are only proxies for that, and neither are completely reliable proxies.

But really, if someone can describe the detailed psuedocode for an algorithm and explain its runtime characteristics, are you going to make them write out what they have just said?

Personally, I think the talking is a lot more valuable than the whiteboard. I rarely have to hand-write complete algorithm on a whiteboard, but I regularly need to communicate technical ideas accurately and succinctly. That's what I'm really trying to demonstrate anyways: of course I can code, but I can also organize my thoughts well and communicate them clearly to others.

Maybe it is because I have a ton of code online for anybody to read that nobody wants to waste their time watching me write code on a whiteboard for hours. Sure, I will get asked to write some code in an interview but it is usally something quick and dirty just to validate thinking through a problem with a bit of pressure.

Honestly, in my experience, most application problems can be reasonably talked through without writing any code.

Lots of people have lots of code online. Lots of companies don't take that into consideration when interviewing.

I share your experience that most problems can be reasonably talked through without writing code, but most people here are talking about a specific kind of interview that does not work that way.