[falcolas]

> The general idea is, if a developer is diligent enough to prepare for these programming contest problems and delivers when required, he is probably going to be helpful as well when the business has a dire need.

How? It's not like the applicant can study for the "dire need" like they can algorithmic interviews. I mean, sure, such an employee can attack the problem with fervor and hours of time, but that doesn't mean that they'll come up with the right solution to the problem.

The ability to choose the "right" algorithm has no correlation the ability to solve problems: The ability to associate pathfinding problems with the proper variant of Dijkstra's algorithm won't help when troubleshooting why customers are getting intermittent 403 errors.