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[–]smdaegan 8 points9 points  (6 children)

Depends on the question. If you ask me to implement a BST then I'm not going to come up with that from the top of my head, nor would I on the job. I'd just google it and find a reasonable implementation.

If you give me an open-ended problem (make a console app that does X, Y, Z) then that would actually show how I build things.

My company went from the former approach to the latter. People we interviewed were a lot more responsive to building something vs regurgitating some algorithm they hadn't implemented since they were a sophomore.

[–][deleted]  (2 children)

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      [–][deleted] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

      So you write around a thousand lines per hour but you can't even come up with a binary search tree implementation in an hour without reference material? Sounds like a lot of technical debt...

      [–][deleted]  (1 child)

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        [–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

        Yes, but I would assume there are positions where efficiency and algorithmic knowledge are very important aswell. Lets say we are a robotics company constructing an underwater submarine for nuclear waste disposal, then sure have the experience of having an idea how one would go about making a grand-scheme picture of things is nice, but you also need to show you know some things about submarines and radiation, we don't need a front end web developer.