Trees and graphs are fundamental to computer science and there are only two ways to traverse them. I don&#x27;t know what kids are doing these days, but I learned this because of my high-school curricula.<p>In other words, it&#x27;s OK if you don&#x27;t have a formal education in computer science, but when you don&#x27;t have it, you need to make up for it by learning on your own, because this is basic stuff that high-school kids are learning. And it&#x27;s even worse when people do have that education on their resume and don&#x27;t know BFS, because it means they cheated on those courses.<p>And what would you prefer for a hiring test? Straight IQ tests? A requirement for public, open-source contributions? Or are you speaking of querying databases and fading out divs? I think we can all agree that neither is entirely fair.<p>And keep in mind that for all the pain involved in the interview process, the only alternative is optimistic hiring for a test period, except that doesn&#x27;t work because it causes distress to everybody involved if it doesn&#x27;t work out. This is why many companies now prefer internships, because thus they are dealing with young people that don&#x27;t have big expectations.