Anyways, practicing solving clever small programming problems at least isn’t boring (though I’m beginning to burn out on it), it reminds me of prepping for a high school or ACM programming contest. As long as it eliminates enough false positives, they’ll keep up with it.

It isn’t just if you can solve these problems, but can you also write straight lines of text on a white board? Also, do it while talking and and standing on one foot at the same time.

I sometimes wish people explain what they mean by that, because I'm confused by the phrase. I assume it's some Americanism that has a broad range of meanings. Cramming trivia for interviews doesn't sound like the "work ethics" I see when I google the term, but then again, I recently had a German student explain to me that they understand hard (but dumb) work as what this phrase means.

My best sense of it is that it is something approximating your ability to follow through on some task that a) was never, or has seized to be interesting or otherwise stimulating or b) is sufficiently difficult that many people would allow themselves to quit. Often related to the idea that there is some form of delayed gratification to be had.

Not quite.

It's a phrase derived from "Protestant Work Ethic":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic

Stripped of the religious connotations the phrase as commonly used (eg. "having a good work ethic") essentially means "feeling an obligation to consistently work hard for your employer".

To use an example from the military "officers eat last".

Translation: have enough free time so spend months preparing for an interview after work hours or have no actual work ethic and do it at your current job.

Basically, fuck people with families, commitments, or already mentally demanding jobs.

So Google is relying on a brute force approach to hiring?

Who's the faker again?