[kafkaesq]

Bubble sort question probes the understanding about the complexity theory,

It's just that, again, you're picking a very marginal example to do that with.

And more fundamentally -- simply asking someone "What's the complexity of $foo"? doesn't tell you anything about whether they "understand" complexity. It only tells you whether they've adequately memorized that particular cell on their crib sheet.

As they are thoroughly incentivized to do, thanks to people employing interview techniques like these.

[eveningcoffee]

I definitely agree with you that shallow quizzes are not very informative and are alone not a good methodology for job interviews.

Naturally this question in isolation is not very informative and it is hard to differentiate if the answer to it comes from a more general understanding or is just memorized. It has to be supported with other questions and wider discussion.

What I want to say is that in a larger context this question is still not unfounded and it is hard for me to consider this or any other listed questions as a signalling a dominant status.