As much as I am a wincity fan, I take exception of his bias toward solution questions from job interviews.

The point is not about how much value they would have in realworld software development, or whether one can spend some offline hours to figure/"google" out. Rather, it's about testing one's apetitude/fitness to software design -- which, in the current stage of software engineering maturity, still makes a difference.

Also, from the money-making perspective, in many niches of today's software world, an "expert plumber" role can be much more lucrative than that of a "templated architect".