[cercatrova]

Depends on the company. FAANG and unicorns will absolutely ask for it to compile (except Google which asks questions on Google Docs of all things), and they want the optimal solution almost right away and will penalize you for not getting such a solution.

[joeframbach]

I just had this unfortunate experience with Google. The interviewer presented some badly-defined vague problem statement, and started asking probing questions about implementation details right away. I'm trying to ask exactly what the problem is, and he's there asking me for the runtime complexity of the solution I'm proposing. Was this dude entirely checked out? It felt like I was talking to a wall.