In my G SRE interview, I had to do the same rigorous Software Engineering algorithms rounds as well as show deep distributed systems knowledge in designing highly available systems.
If by rigorous algorithms you mean, spend a month memorizing a few dozen leetcode problems then sure, I’ll agree that is sadly the state of SRE interviews at FAANG.
Still the same competency. Someone needs to know how those protocols work, tell you latency characteristics of storage, and read those core dumps.