>1. No, you don't need to know everything... It takes maybe a week for a smart developer without a CS degree to learn what they need to know for interviews.

I just went through a job search and I didn't find this true. I think the bar on algorithms has raised significantly with all of the prep material (your book included) out there. I also found a few companies sent over "things to study" lists that were quite comprehensive and included topics that you might not even see in undergrad.

>I'm not sure what you expect here. Do you want companies to hire based on how smoothly you're able to bullshit about what you can claim to have done in the past?

I think this is a false dichotomy. I had two friends that just interviewed at Stripe and loved their process: https://stripe.com/jobs/engineering-onsite.pdf