I prepared recently for an interview like this and took my time to practice hackerrank puzzles.
I'll admit that and I found myself re-employing one of the things I learned to creatively solve a problem, however this only applies to my personal/passion project which is mostly shader-based and where algorithmic optimization knowledge like this is highly useful and applicable. In every day work however, and the kind of work I'm doing for companies 99% of the time it's not useful, as you'd expect.
I'll admit that and I found myself re-employing one of the things I learned to creatively solve a problem, however this only applies to my personal/passion project which is mostly shader-based and where algorithmic optimization knowledge like this is highly useful and applicable. In every day work however, and the kind of work I'm doing for companies 99% of the time it's not useful, as you'd expect.