Google's “Director of Engineering” Hiring Test

I've been at Google for five years as a SWE and I've been interviewing for 3 of those. I'd fail this pop quiz.

This strikes me as bizarre and inconsistent with all the practices I'm aware of. The idea that we'd ask anyone this stuff, let alone director candidates, strains belief.

I only have a sample size of one, but I blew threw a phone interview with Google about a year ago -- and the guy giving it was very technically skilled. We talked about the subtler aspects of the questions as we went.

They offered an in-person interview, of course, but I declined when I found out that they were only hiring for Google Payments in Boulder. I'm sure the job has interesting aspects, and maybe my imagination just isn't up to the task, but I have a hard time figuring out how I wouldn't go insane with boredom working on a system that just moves money around, not to mention frustration from working with the extra regulatory/process restrictions that must be in place to keep compliance up...

I know someone working in that area--apparently lots of string parsing. It's vitally important (moving money usually is) but not very exciting/cutting edge (moving money usually isn't--after all, it's an old technology).