[troels]

No, you have to read my response in context (E.g. as a response to plumbing and many others who can solve them). I work with software that supports business processes, manage information and facilitates interaction between humans and machines. In that field (if it is even meaningful to speak of such a broad category as a single field), knowing how to write the most efficient sorting algoritm is fairly close to worthless.

I'm sure that if you work at Google, where crunching big data is key; or in a company like Microsoft or Apple, where applications are much closer to the hardware; then these things do matter. But I propose that a major part of software development happens in a space where such things are irrelevant or at least very rarely relevant.

Regarding my outsourcing remark, let me clarify a bit. What I mean to say is that while the stuff that is close to the hardware might take skilled workers, it does not require cultural skills. For example, I would suggest that it's a lot easier to outsource a hardware driver than it is to outsource a workflow engine for an order process. For the latter, you need to be close to your users and you need to understand the business you're modeling.

Mind you, I think it's fine that we teach this stuff in universities - it's good background knowledge to have. But as a practical skill, I question its value. And in a job interview, I would suggest to test the skills that are actually needed in the relevant job.

Oh, and I didn't choose my name; My parents did. It's traditional and somewhat common name in Scandinavia. You're not the first to get that wrong though.