I disagree. If I was hiring, I'd be interested in top-notch people who are passionate but also just really damn smart, rather than having, say, specific platform or language knowledge. This is what Google did, and it's worked out pretty well for them.
I interviewed for an APM position at Google yesterday and the guy gave me a pretty tough technical question. It was actually harder than any of the dev questions I got from them. After working through it, he said "You'd be surprised how many people don't even give me the brute force solution." So yeah, these questions have their merits.
But it's also possible to ask similar questions that involve the actual technologies involved.
The hardest interview I've had was with my current employer. My now-supervisor grilled me with Javascript and SQL questions. They were easy at first, and became increasingly more difficult, to the point that I just had to "I don't know" to a few of them. The questions required a bit of problem solving (so it wasn't all technical details), so the process was just as important as the answer, but in the end, it gave the interviewer a detailed view into my level of competency with the technologies I would use daily.
It should be noted that I thought I bombed the interview, but a few weeks later I had an offer in hand. When I got the call, I had a mind to ask him if he had the right person. :-)
A developer who is self-aware and mature enough to answer "I don't know" is good to have around, and usually more valuable to a company than someone who freaks out or starts making stuff up once they're outside their current range of knowledge.
It's possible the interviewer was screening you for that as much as for your technical skills.
I interviewed for an APM position at Google yesterday and the guy gave me a pretty tough technical question. It was actually harder than any of the dev questions I got from them. After working through it, he said "You'd be surprised how many people don't even give me the brute force solution." So yeah, these questions have their merits.