My very unofficial interpretation of hiring processes like that isn't that what's demanded is that people know algorithms from memory, it's that they are so familiar with algorithms that knowing from memory isn't hard to them.
Maybe, but what are these really applicable to? Embedded systems, high performance or maybe graphics loops... I'd think anyone working in a higher level interpreted language would not need to memorize much of anything. Probably not Java, R, Python, etc. And these tests all seem to be about implementing them rather than applying them which seems like something most people shouldn't do if there is a version out there already that is known to be working.
This assumes that everyone just has a huge set of canned answers memorized, versus putting together some on-the-fly combinations of some building blocks like maps and different things to do with lists.
If you can memorize the whole world, that probably would be useful day to day too - I'm sure you'd see a lot of stuff you could use the shit you memorized for! - but it doesn't seem to be happening much.
I think this is the most reasonable answer, and perhaps the memorization stuff is more of a measurement of who paid the most attention in the most recent of class taking... I just feel as I progress in my career and do ever more complicated things, I'm shedding more and more ready knowledge of any specifics, but perhaps making and ever more complex map of how to find what I need.
For specialist roles and experience, I'd definitely interview differently. Hard to do live coding there, but if you can tell me exactly about how you've solved problems in the space, that's awesome.
Most of where I've see the "how would you manipulate this array" type of stuff is generalist stuff or new-to-the-particular-subdomain candidates, where if I asked for exactly what I'm looking for them to know, they'd fail. Gotta just look for people who can learn it on the fly fast instead, and I haven't found any better proxies yet. :|
Yes! A former engineer at Google put together this blog post[0] about an interview question he asks and its pertinence to what's done day to day at Google. It sheds some light on the usefulness of having these algorithms memorized.
This is a post more about something this person finds interesting rather than something I can tell they seriously mean to evaluate a coworker or employee. They even say they don't know why similar things haven't done well as ways to evaluate people to hire??
Maybe I'm In a slightly unique position because the role I hire for is "Algorithm Developer", but if you've memorised an algorithm I will keep asking you questions until I find an algorithm that you haven't memorised. I don't care whether you know the "correct" algorithm, I care that you can find a working solution to an unknown problem (since that's literally your job) and I care that you know how to assess the good and bad parts of your solution.
I like this response quite a bit. Sounds like I could forget all the names, be fuzzy on the specifics, but if I've been doing the work it couldn't help but show eventually.
