[nilkn]

Potentially interesting data point: the company I'm at right now has been pretty successful for over a decade and has, to my knowledge, never once asked a dynamic programming question in an interview for any candidate in that entire time. We've managed to hire a lot of great developers and have very rarely had any real issues.

[yanslookup]

Does the company you are at now pay developers the same as the companies that ask these types of questions? In my experience the companies asking these types of questions are picky because they can be.

[alexandercrohde]

I'd break that down like this:

Google-esque companies figure "Let's just ask these hard puzzles to filter by IQ, everything practical (e.g. databases) can be learned"

However, some companies tend not to see these specialized puzzles as an IQ test, but rather a memorization-based learned skill (learn these 10 algorithms and their performance metrics). To them, asking questions that represent day-to-day job challenges is a better predictor.

[sbov]

They aren't picky because they can be. If that were true they wouldn't be complaining about the lack of qualified developers (pretty much every tech company I know of).

Rather, they're picky because they (think they) need to be.

Note that I'm not judging whether they are right or not.

[mikert5671]

false. I know hoards of engineers working on boring code at google

[sidlls]

That doesn't make it false.

[nilkn]

We pay very well for the area. We are not in Silicon Valley, but I know some of our salaries are higher than those of my friends who are at Google's MV campus.

[coastal-fiesta]

It's not terribly impressive to have a higher salary then a GOOG employee, but higher total compensation after stock and bonuses would be saying something.

[yanslookup]

Interesting. What industry if you don't want to name names? Total comp at Google for a "senior" (8-12 years experience) is $300k-$400k. Rare to hear about a non SV darling paying developers that much.

[akhilcacharya]

Don't want to speak for OP but it's highly possible he or she doesn't know how much Google-tier companies pay nowadays!

[simtel20]

And some boutique finance firms are made of money.

[extesy]

Can you share your company name?

[hk__2]

I’ll let OP share it if they want, but FYI if you search a bit that information is freely available on the Internet.

[otasevic]

That's awesome! I generally think that DP problems introduce more noise because they're relatively easy to prepare for. So you might easily miss a good engineer who is not prepared. I try to argue about that in the beginning of the blog.

However, they're a reality for many interview loops, so it's better to be prepared.

Btw, what are some things that your company tests for, if you don't mind sharing?