Mainly because us interviewers tend towards the sadism end of the spectrum /s Personally I use it to determine how a candidate approaches a problem. Most of th

Mainly because us interviewers tend towards the sadism end of the spectrum /s Personally I use it to determine how a candidate approaches a problem. Most of these types of questions have an obvious solution that has a terrible runtime, and then have several optimisation layers on top of that. I want to see: * can the candidate reason about a complex problem that has multiple steps. * are they able to offer a basic solution in pseudo-code (the dreaded "whiteboard" section). * can they analyse their own solution, for example expected runtime, optimisations, etc (also how they handle criticism) * how would they go about testing their solution - that is, what test cases would they use to verify their solution is correct (along with this, what error checking would they do) There are no 'right' answers to these questions - it's about the process. > I am still to see a problem which uses advanced competitive coding knowledge In my work I've found it's not about applying a clever hack: its about recognising patterns and learning which algorithm/data-structure is appropriate, and how to apply it effectively. Just like in a competition.