I was checking out the interview questions people are posting on glassdoor.com and felt pretty stupid after going through them. I work at a successful startup at a pretty high level, and I could not tell you the best sort algorithm for some particular case. I could tell you how I would model it in a database, since that's really where large datasets get manipulated in my world. I wonder if the types of algorithm-heavy questions I see in interviews are there because these companies need that skillset, or is it to weed out people who aren't 'rockstar' or 'A Player' engineers. Sometimes it feels like a pissing contest to see who has the hardest interview. At my company, we give you a couple of real world coding tests, as long as you do ok, it's all about your personality and whether or not you seem cool to work with. It seems to work very well.