[seanp2k2]

I'd rather work with the ones who actually care about the people they're solving problems for vs the ones who can write bubble sort with no reference material, which happens in the real world precisely never. Employers pay developers to solve problems, not necessarily to write the most efficient code possible. I get that it's a craft and it's good to understand what happens under the hood, but you can get pretty damn far solving actual business problems for people without having to care which brand of sort ES2016 uses. These skills in micro-optimizations / textbook CS don't help much with understanding customers and solving their problems at the end of the day, so they're really not that valuable for many business scenarios. I think that a lot of engineers in this industry forget that they're not generally paid to write the most efficient data structures and algorithms for 40 hours a week, and that ironically, attempting to do so would very likely not be the most efficient means of increasing shareholder value. Can't see the forest for the B-trees, if you will.

https://github.com/poteto/hiring-without-whiteboards has a list of companies who don't participate in this particular flavor of shenanigans.

[rs86]

I don't think knowing details of algorithms is why strong CS skills are important.

Understanding CS teaches a lot about seeing abstractions and choosing between different levels of abstraction and problem solving. It greatly helps modelling business problems as software. I don't think it is important as an end in itself.