How often are dynamic programming questions asked in technical interviews?

Having said that, folks have recently started avoiding DP questions as mentioned in another answer. The reason could be that they test a very specific type of intelligence which doesn’t correlate well with actual developer skills.

Dynamic programming questions are ‘mostly’ not applicable in real-world settings. However, they can decently judge problem-solving capabilities of candidates which makes them a good choice for interviews. It’s also much easier to create a challenging DP problem compared to a non-DP one, which makes interviewers prefer them as they’ve got more options to choose from.

Having said that, folks have recently started avoiding DP questions as mentioned in another answer. The reason could be that they test a very specific type of intelligence which doesn’t correlate well with actual developer skills.

While I was at Rubrik, we would actively avoid such problems altogether for senior roles. I’d have a separate set of problems in case I had to interview a person with lots of experience. For experienced candidates, traditional algorithmic interviews don’t really make much sense anyway. You’d rather focus on designing systems and system-coding exercises i.e. implement a rudimentary job scheduler, readers-writers and so on.

So if your interviews consist of algorithmic interviews, practice DP problems heavily. They hone your puzzle-solving skills, plus they are extremely fun too!