Comment by gotosleep

"if you did get hired for this role and managed to keep it, you'll be a master at this stuff within a couple of years." I wholeheartedly disagree. I have a total of 14 years of experience. I've been at Google for the past 6 years. I'm an L5 (Senior Engineer) and I get good performance reviews. I interview candidates on a fairly regular basis on behalf of Google. I am fully confident that if I had to re-interview for my job today, without extensive pre-prep like the author suggests, I would have a very slim chance of passing. The fact is, these algorithm quizzes have nothing at all to do with our job. On the off chance once ever 5 years you actually do need to apply an algorithm, you would do extensive study into the possible options and solutions, write a design doc, have it peer reviewed, and then go down that path - not pull something out of your ass in 15 minutes.