Those are all great points. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, etc, do have those questions as well. There are 3 types of interviews: (1) coding, (2) systems design, and (3) leadership principles, culture, soft-skills, etc. Generally a loop will have a blend of those 3. For example for SDE-I you may have 3 coding, 1 design, 1 leadership; for Principal you may have 1 coding, 2 systems design, 3 leadership. As an interviewer, you're assigned #1, #2 or #3. You're right, I absolutely preferred to do #3 and I learned a lot about a candidate that way. But when assigned #1, you got to do #1...