foobaz1982731
Completely agree, and you might even learn something during the interview, especially if you were previously the "API" programmer group. I'm entirely self-taught, so I will readily admit that my algorithms and data-structures knowledge is not where I feel it should be.
I did an interview somewhat recently where we talked about a problem that required the use of a data-structure that I had literally read about in preparation for said interview two days earlier, but did not really understand a solid use case for it. As we discussed the problem that was presented, I ended up arriving at the correct solution and everything was happy, but that's not the cool part. The cool part was that as a result of that conversation, all of the sudden the use for that data-structure "clicked", and an entire class of problems suddenly became obvious in how to optimally solve. I will actually be using that exact solution in a side project that's in the planning phase
I haven't done the on-site interview yet, but regardless of whether or not I get an offer (or even accept the offer if one is made), I know that I'm going to walk away from this interview a better engineer for having learned about these algorithms and data-structures just to interview.
Looking back at that phone interview, I wonder just how many other problems I've encountered and solved that would've been better served if I knew more about algorithms and data structures.