> Yeah, learning algorithms is a chore and a hassle
> If the interviewer can see that you're able to make yourself do that for the interview, it's a good sign you'll have the discipline to do some of the grunge work...
This doesn't make any sense, unless very, very specific bounds are put on the interview questions beforehand...
Without that, what is a candidate to do? Memorize all known data structures and algorithms?
No, but you should know the classics. That's kind of the "general contract" for how these big tech companies interview. Most also proactively tell candidates what material they should expect to be interviewed on, like:
https://careers.google.com/how-we-hire/interview/#onsite-int...
A good interviewer is not aiming to ask gotcha questions where if you don't know that one specific weird algorithm for that one specific data structure, you're entirely hosed. That provides almost no useful signal to the interviewer.
But they will ask questions where some well known data structure is part of the solution and then provide guidance as needed based on what you seem to know.