While I understand the context is "stupid inteview questions", I would not say Big O-notation is useless, even for non-Google companies - just read some of the

While I understand the context is "stupid inteview questions", I would not say Big O-notation is useless, even for non-Google companies - just read some of the stories at thedailywtf.com to learn how bad it gets. Also, there's a difference between asking "How would you solve X (in Y language)" and expecting a line-by-line code sample. In the former you should be able to talk about how you would structure the code, what input/output you would need, how to set it up, data stores, etc. whereas the latter is (virtually) impossible without help from Google. While it would be lovely to hire candidates by "everything it says in the resume", the truth is that only works for really great hire... which you don't know until you've talked to them about how they work, what they've done and how they like to solve problem.