[biztos]

I don't think the knowledge is useless as much as it's properly abstracted away into core libraries for 99.999% of the real-world use-cases.

Maybe the questions started as "IQ tests" (or a proxy for "fresh out of a Stanford-like CS Program?") but my impression is that now it's a mild (or not) proxy for hazing.

"I suffered through this crap and by God you are going to suffer through it to, or you can't join my little club, and by the way I just make a hundred dollars telling you that."

Edit: clarity & speling

[jkachmar]

I think knowledge of the concepts is very useful, but precise recall of the algorithmic implementations is absolutely useless.

It’s very different for someone to have a solid grasp of, say, cache-aware programming techniques, algorithms and data structures that are necessary for low-latency architectural work, etc.

...but I’m aware of very few positions (if any???) that require the ability to arbitrarily synthesize that information on the spot.

EDIT: Originally meant to lead with the fact that I broadly agree with what you’re saying, I just wanted to clarify my original objection.