I accept the point that over optimizing is the root of all evil and the rest of the philosophy along those lines. But knowing algorithms and data structures inside out, because where and when you have to choose what - i doubt one can be called a programmer without all that.
And i would say again, i am yet to find some body renowned, who has made their mark as a programmer, and doesn't regard all of this stuff high enough.
Having said all that, if you work in a high level language and develop client facing / application layer desktop/web related stuff - and not involving too much scaling, you won't need these things most of the times. But if not, you can't live with out these.
Lastly, since college and probably since learning to program, the best of the breed usually were the guys who went on to acm and top coder kinda stuff. It is true that building products is not synonymous, but it definitely plays an undeniable part albeit i must agree that it is slightly over valued, nothing else.