[sagarm]

You rarely need to write your own sort or hashmap, but you should absolutely understand at a high level how those algorithms work, how to analyze them, and the key concepts that go into their design.

The point of the undergrad CS syllabus is not to teach you specific algorithms, but to give you a toolkit for solving problems. The goal of a SWE interview should be to test your ability to apply that toolkit to a "new" problem.

[balls187]

Amazon asked me to implement a hashtable and email the interviewer the solution by the next morning.

I politely declined; was heading off to Spain for a long weekend.

[sagarm]

IMO that's not a good interview question even f2f, let alone on email. As an interviewer I would learn nothing from that, and I agree it's unreasonable to give an interviewee homework.

As far as I know, that is not SOP for FANG interviews.

[balls187]

This was nearly 10 years ago.