wow, unless you got a different question that I did I am amazed at your response. The algorithm is used often in CS, that you didn't know this kind of makes my point. Sure you can probably work as a programmer for years and not care about writing well optimized code, processors are so damn fast these days you can ignore the code quality and get away with it.

Also if you couldn't reason your way to the answer how would I have any confidence you could reason any other problem of similar difficulty level. This kind of problem shouldn't you more than 5 or 10 minutes to figure out.

Sorry, we pass on your application :)