It's also a weak proxy for high conscientiousness. More often than not, it's actually signalling someone is young enough to not have other commitments, contribu

It's also a weak proxy for high conscientiousness. More often than not, it's actually signalling someone is young enough to not have other commitments, contributing to age discrimination without even meaning to. It also does in the way that older engineers are less likely to have CS degrees just because CS programs were rarer and less well-known before the 90s. That's not sour grapes, either. I have a CS degree and worked through math and logic puzzles for fun from the time I was 6, well before I ever knew what a computer was. Interviews like this are practically made for someone like me, but even there, the signal you're getting is I'll gladly do something I like doing anyway, not that I'm going to show similar conscientiousness when it comes time to get into your daily company grind that actually has nothing to do with solving interesting algorithms puzzles.