I’ve only been asked about algorithms twice. Once in 1999 when the job was to write portable C and the second time I was asked to write a merge sort in 2016.

Even though they made an offer, it told me a lot about the company that they never asked me any architectural questions. I declined the offer. The job I did take, the manager asked me what would my 6 month plan be to create a modern software development department and to migrate their system from one based on PowerBuilder written in 2000 to use modern technologies.

For my current job - still as just as individual contributor at a small company, we discussed the technical challenges and the goals he had and we started diagramming.

I would have to try my best not to laugh at a company who was building yet another software as a service CRUD system who asked me to do algorithms.