You're not the only one. The more experience I get developing software with other people, the more I value stuff that isn't really captured by coding interviews:
* do you thoroughly document your code without nagging?
* do you value simplicity over cleverness?
* do you think communication is a chore?
* do you enjoy human interaction?
* do you have empathy?
* are you creative?
* do you have good taste?
Googrosoft-style interviews are great for selecting people with raw intelligence, a competitive streak and some level of arrogance. They're not quite as hot at selecting reasonably smart people who are personable, creative and tasteful. And that's a huge portion of the job when you're writing software in a group. Very little day-to-day software work requires raw brilliance, but nearly all of it requires communication, empathy, creativity and taste.
And how do you test for all of these things that you listed during an interview? I've been in charge of technical interviews for a large corporation for a year and a half, and there have been many truly shitty developers who couldn't solve even simple programming problems, but they knew how to bullshit, and they would totally ace your questions.
"I've been in charge of technical interviews for a large corporation for a year and a half, and there have been many truly shitty developers who couldn't solve even simple programming problems, but they knew how to bullshit, and they would totally ace your questions."
Well, first, it's not like I just ask someone if they enjoy documenting code, and expect them not to lie. That would be stupid. It's much easier to just ask coding questions than to figure out if someone is creative. That's why the problem is hard.
Second, how do you focus on the other important factors, and still manage to test for coding ability? You ask coding questions -- you just don't devote the entire interview process to them.
