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by scarface74 2960 days ago
And most of the interviewers asking these questions just want someone who can help develop yet another software as a service CRUD app....
2 comments

Exactly. I've been a C, C++, and java developer for the past 12 years and never used Big-O for anything other than a shibboleth to get past the door. A couple places practically used C++ itself as a gatekeeper: they want people who are smart enough to program in C++ and survive it's rigorous interview process, but their main product is filling out forms and routing documents through a document management system.
I did have to do one algorithm type interview in 1999, but the company was actually writing cross platform (Windows console, Unix, and MVS) C code where we had to implement everything from scratch, so it made sense. But unless you're Google, Facebook, Netflix, etc. where you have to solve problems at a scale that no one has had to solve before, most of the algorithm style questions are meaningless in your day to day work.
Yep. We need superman, but we are a bicycle repair shop.

Only superman will do, that is the only thing we know for sure.

In another world, everyone is superman and we are looking for a bicycle repair man: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54CpPlCnM4I
Hoped someone would get the monty python reference :D