I think algorithmic interviews are good, because they are a kind of intelligence test. In spite of liberal dogma, some people are more talented and intellegent

I think algorithmic interviews are good, because they are a kind of intelligence test. In spite of liberal dogma, some people are more talented and intellegent than others, and tests can shed light on this. However, the article does expose some flaws. Here are two bad kind of algorithm questions 1) Questions that rely too much on background knowledge. Knowing the exact properties or implementation of the more complex algorithms in the canon of undergraduate CS knowledge is not a particularly useful skill in itself. 2) Questions that have some trick that you either get or don't get. These aren't always terrible, but they give a big advantage to someone who has seen the question before. So what is a good algorithm based question? 1) Implementing something basic but non-trivial, like N-Queens with backtracking. Basically, something anyone should be able to do. 2) Something that mixes in domain knowledge. E.g. problems calculating probabilities than can be solved with dynamic programming. 3) Pure domain knowledge, but in programming form. E.g. how to implement k-means clustering.