I agree with this--but I don't think the interviewer should be asking for an implementation of Dijkstra's in the first place. That's my whole point--it's not a real world problem to need to know an algorithm from memory. If I need a particular algo, I'll look it up and find a supported open source library that implements it 10x better than I could have.
My point is that you can gauge somebody's knowledge without making good software developers feel inferior e.g. by asking them how they would go about finding a person's likely connections given some weighted data for an imaginary social network. And then you can maybe get responses like, "That's a good question--I've dealt with that before when I was working on X, Y, Z and ended up using weighted graphs according to how many friends a person had in common …" or "I'm not entirely sure on the exact algorithm I'd recommend, but that sounds like we would set up a weighted graph and go from there …".
Rather than making talented people feel stupid, you encourage conversation. But what do I know, I don't interview people every day so take what I say with that in mind. I just think tech interviewing is broken. I'm always left frustrated and my excitement to join the team dies down due to thinking I won't fit in because I'm not "smart" enough.
My point is that you can gauge somebody's knowledge without making good software developers feel inferior e.g. by asking them how they would go about finding a person's likely connections given some weighted data for an imaginary social network. And then you can maybe get responses like, "That's a good question--I've dealt with that before when I was working on X, Y, Z and ended up using weighted graphs according to how many friends a person had in common …" or "I'm not entirely sure on the exact algorithm I'd recommend, but that sounds like we would set up a weighted graph and go from there …".
Rather than making talented people feel stupid, you encourage conversation. But what do I know, I don't interview people every day so take what I say with that in mind. I just think tech interviewing is broken. I'm always left frustrated and my excitement to join the team dies down due to thinking I won't fit in because I'm not "smart" enough.