It's because they don't know the answer, the first round is a recruiter asking you trivia to separate you from people who know nothing, in the hope of not wasting their engineers' time.

To be honest, I don't think money is a good reason enough to tolerate that kind environment, I'd rather work in a smaller company paying less and build a small business on the side to increase your passive revenue streams.

Maybe things will change with faang going remote because of COVID (given one perk of small companies was their flexibility) but it looks like your salary at big companies will also scale according to your location, so I'm not too hopeful.