I never would claim that your algorithmic skills define you as a professional - on the contrary with age I got worse at contest-style coding while getting gene

I never would claim that your algorithmic skills define you as a professional - on the contrary with age I got worse at contest-style coding while getting generally better (I believe) at the trade. It's just that my experience is that the companies would generally require pretty basic stuff. On your points,it sounds more like bad interviews if they're about syntax, not about the logic.