I doubt so. Open ended questions like "generating ideas" allows the interviewer to judge what your level of reasoning is. If you propose "add more GPU" or "let's tweak the transformer parameters with some quantization, like in this research article published a year ago" it makes a huge difference.

IOW the expectations are hidden from the interviewed person.

Open ended questions like generating ideas was the "Culture Fit" session (and if it wasnt or the company doesnt realise it is then it is an even bigger problem)

Culture fit is a funny thing. I was set up for an interview and one of the things was a take-home tic tac toe.

I asked "uh, what's the point when I can just ask ChatGPT to do this? Is there something else I could be doing?" And I was instantly dinged because I didn't align with their culture. Which I guess is true, since I'm not into time-wasting questions that aren't even fun.

Or rather, you're not into "following orders without challenging them first". What the order is, doesn't really matter.

> Nevertheless, based on the process, it sounds like they will end up hiring pretty medicore candidates.

What would you change in order to hire higher quality people?

Its the answer nobody hiring wants to hear, spend more (skilled not hr) human time screening and interviewing the candidates.

The process outlined put a stronger emphasis on luck, and catching fire in the 6 minutes you had than skill.

Don't forget the inevitable emphasis on "grinding Leetcode."

As usual the best existing employees would fail the interview process.

Well, I definitely failed the brainstorming stage. Disappointed with the result, but have no hard feelings. Wish they let me do the take-home assignment, but it is what it is. Rolled the dice. It was not my day. Will roll it again with as many companies as it takes to get a good gig.