This is pretty common in the tech industry. Everyone sort of adopted the "Google style" interview with lots of algorithms and complex problems, but few have Goo

This is pretty common in the tech industry. Everyone sort of adopted the "Google style" interview with lots of algorithms and complex problems, but few have Google style problems to solve. When poorly managed most of these interviews turn into a random subset of the engineers at a company asking you to implement something completely useless so they can "help you along" and seem smart when they judge your solution. (hint: startups have a billion other problems to solve before optimizing a sort over what a standard library can provide will ever move the needle) An extension of this is every developer regardless of level ends up getting the algorithms questions and mind games because it is the only way most engineers know how to interview. Unless the company is still very small (3-5 people), most of the people you talk to in an interview won't have any control over what you are working on anyway. They will probably be your peers and tell you what they are working on, but don't take that as an indication of your role unless you hear it from the person you'll be reporting to.