[NotOscarWilde]

I do not know the OP and I cannot prove or disprove any claims they make about their life, but I can indirectly attest to the following: I was competing around 2008-2010 at the regional level of the ICPC in Central Europe and indeed, our team's approach at the time had some memorization aspects as well. (Our university had a significant amount of support for the competitions, with some coaching as well as a course that consisted of weekly practice contests.)

We never won anything, so I would not dare claim we competed at a highest level. As far as I remember, most of our preparation was about "recognition" -- how to tell if a greedy approach is optimal, or how to recognize if a dynamic approach fits. And of course, how to write a program quickly and not forget any corner cases.

I remember having daydreams back then of memorizing a max-flow algorithm or potentially even a linear programming solver and then quickly retyping it at a competition. Flows and LPs indeed solve a lot of stuff (LPs are P-complete). I admit I never did that, and it wouldn't be a winning strategy there anyway.

PS: Oh, and contrary to the poster above, most of my friends from the university days would be and indeed were great hires, judging by their jobs at Google, Microsoft and elsewhere. Some others, such as the actual ICPC winners from our university, ended up pursuing academic careers -- but I dare not say they would have a bad time in the industry.

[geraldwhen]

Central Europe and Russia take competitive programming far more seriously than the U.S., from what my professors told me. It took very little effort to take first in a university wide competition and join the team that represented the school and went on to win the region. I suspect most Central European teams would sweep the USA.