I guess I would expect just about anyone to know what a bubble sort is, but I wonder if that's bias from the classes I took. Every class on algorithms I ever to

I guess I would expect just about anyone to know what a bubble sort is, but I wonder if that's bias from the classes I took. Every class on algorithms I ever took would start off with a bubble sort as an example of a sorting algorithm, then use it as exhibit A for figuring out the big O performance of an algorithm (the outcome of which was always, "...and that's why you should never use a bubble sort"). I assume that most people were taught most of the same material as I was, but in reality that may not be the case. It's very hard to pin down what sorts of things "everyone" should be expected to know. I agree with the consensus that whiteboard coding and CS trivia is not a good way to run interviews, but I bet many/most of the people who complain the loudest about interviews have their own misconceptions about what constitutes common knowledge for programmers. Any hiring process based on asking several current employees to take turns talking to someone for 30-60 minutes and make a hiring decision based on that is going to be deeply flawed. However, the only alternatives I've heard are so much more costly, lengthy, and elaborate that I just can't imagine many companies moving to a different process anytime soon. This debate is also complicated because different people want very different things out of the process. Job seekers want processes that minimize false negatives (i.e., they don't want to fail the interview even though they'd make good employees), but employers want processes that minimize false positives (they don't want people who get through the hiring process that end up being bad employees that the company is now stuck with). The current process probably doesn't do either of these things. But every more elaborate process I've heard people say they want seems to go to one extreme or the other- it either greatly favors the job seeker who hates false negatives, or greatly favors the employer who hates false positives. It's a hard problem with no good answers yet unfortunately. :(