I feel the same. This really irks me. Obviously there are areas of building software where algorithms are a big deal. I recently was approached by a facebook recruiter(for android team) and amazon(can't recall the exact engineering position)...the facebook was even saying we will be asking some medium and a a few hard questions......literally ranked the same way as all the sites that people grind. I'm debating if I want to do it or not. Working at those companies can be beneficial for my resume but the interview process bothers me. The fact that you can solve a problem does not mean you are a good software engineer. There is just so much more to development, architecture, oop, good team work and communication etc but maybe it is easier to teach those things than algorithms. Maybe this system works for the big companies. Plus, I think they are more likely to higher people who are obedient as people who simply won't put up with that hiring process might be more of a 'speak up' type.

They're just using them as "how bad you want it" + IQ filters. The interviews end up testing for some combination of that—want very very badly + good but not amazing IQ, or want somewhat + very high IQ, that sort of thing. That one cannot be prepared for these interviews with the work one does 40 hours a week is by design.