The other week I saw this post about programming competitions and how they supposedly correlate negatively to job performance. This was according to Peter Norvig.
I found this interesting because as most will know the typical work of a programmer is very different from a programming competition.
After looking around a bit I found a Hacker News post for the same blog page with some interesting comments.
The one that got me thinking was the one that postulated that interviewing was similar to programming competitions. If you think about it a bit, the similarity's are there in that you are in competition with others and there is a final decision being made about the winner. Also, there typically one or more questions (or challenges) that you must accomplish. These challenges are also typically very similar to ones you'll find in competitions.
This means that though your job won't necessarily involve skills from compeition problem solving your ability to get a job does. With this sites like Hacker Rank will be a useful prerequisite to interviewing for the near future.