Having been through the puzzle dog and pony shows at Facebook and Google, I still have to say that the best interview I've seen was a trial carried out by my last employer.
They hired the candidate as contractor on a one-week term. He paired with the senior members of the team and worked on the code base from day one. He started as a full-time employee two weeks later.
This process would be difficult if you had a full-time job already or if there are a relatively high number of potentially qualified candidates, how do you choose who should come work for a week? It may get expensive quickly, certainly for a small startup.
All fair points. Given the circumstances it was great, but it doesn't scale. The candidate worked as a contractor and wanted to transition to a full time position.
Google seems to be doing pretty well anyway though. I've tried several of their products and they seem pretty decent. I have a hard time imagining that stuff I found like google search and google maps were built by developers without any skills. Therefore it seems reasonable to conclude that they must be able to hire good people with their current methods, despite the skepticism.
All it tells us is that at least some competent people make it through their interview process, but it's a rare company that has an interview process that effectively filters out all competent people and remains a going concern for any length of time.
The fact that Google produces "pretty decent" products doesn't actually tell us whether their famously stringent comp sci trivia quiz system produces any better results than, say, throwing a packet of resumes down the stairs and hiring the ones that land face up.
When I say that I've heard of this company named Google and the seem to produce some decent products, I am understating the fact that they are one of the top software oriented companies in the world today. Since this is widely known I saw no reason to either call attention to that or belabor it, that would just be silly and a waste of time.
You suspect that one could get the same results by throwing resumes down the stairs and hiring all the ones that land face up. That is a testable hypothesis. I recommend you test it and post back here with your results. I look forward to reading your report.
I don't understand how "here's a hard-seeming problem, solve it please" is a "comp sci trivia quiz". What specifically are you referring to? Have you ever interviewed at Google?
They hired the candidate as contractor on a one-week term. He paired with the senior members of the team and worked on the code base from day one. He started as a full-time employee two weeks later.