I&#x27;m torn.<p>On the one hand: the interview processes this post describes are hilariously broken. Stand up at a whiteboard and implement breadth-first search from memory! You know, like no programmer at their desk staring at their editor ever does. I think &quot;that&#x27;s the one where you use a queue, right?&quot; is a fully valid and <i>complete</i> answer to that dumb question.<p>I also think you&#x27;re within your rights to demand that your interviewer implement Kruskal&#x27;s minimum cost spanning tree from memory at the same whiteboard <i>before</i> you have to do BFS. That&#x27;s an extremely simple and important graph theory algorithm that nobody memorizes either.<p>These interviews are nerd status rituals. Really good candidates know this and game them. If you know anyone like this, ask them for stories. I&#x27;ve heard some great ones. But obviously, this isn&#x27;t a good way to select software developers.<p><i>On the other hand...</i><p>The idea that &quot;front-end developers&quot; shouldn&#x27;t need to be able to implement a BFS (at all) bothers me a lot. If you&#x27;re a software developer, you should grok basic conceptual computer science. You should be able to work with a graph. If you&#x27;re doing web work, you&#x27;re working with graphs all day whether you grok that or not!<p>I&#x27;ve been doing front-end work for the past month, and I&#x27;ve had to do more low-level profiling and performance work here than in the previous 4 years of low-level systems work.