Network linear programming does not even have a Wikipedia article; you expect every candidate to have read some complex and specific literature about it?
"Get it": No, I am saying that in asking about linear programming and dynamic programming as in Skiena, Google is not "prepared" and, really, is dealing in nonsense. If want someone to know some optimization and have a good reason for this, then fine. Then, cover some good material on optimization. But evaluating people on trivia about optimization as in Skiena is silly and arrogant, uninformed, dysfunctional, destructive, etc. It's something from the Queen in Alice in Wonderland:
"They didn't review Skiena? They don't know dynamic programming? Then, off with their heads!".
At the level of Skiena, f'get about optimization.
Again, Google is showing that they are far too centered on 'computer science' where they accept low quality material just because it was hijacked from its real origins in various fields of applied mathematics into a book on 'computer science' and poorly presented there.
For the network simplex algorithm, about the most elementary case is the transportation problem where find a least cost way to ship widgets from several factories to several warehouses. Then generalize to a network. Then, a simplex algorithm linear programming basis is just a spanning tree in the network. To add a variable to the basis, add an arc from the network. Then the spanning tree will be converted to a network with a circuit. Then run flow around that circuit in the direction that reduces cost until the flow on some arc hits zero. Remove that arc from the basis and again have a spanning tree. Cunningham's work guarantees to avoid cycles and tends to be faster.
See, say, pages 311-317 of
Va\v sek Chv\'atal, {\it Linear Programming,\/} ISBN 0-7167-1587-2, W. H. Freeman, New York, 1983.\ \
(in TeX to get the accents right!),
W. H. Cunningham, "A Network Simplex Method," 'Mathematical Programming', volume 11, pages 105-116, 1976.
W. H. Cunningham, "Theoretical Properties of the Network Simplex Method," 'Mathematics of Operations Research', volume 4, pages 196-208, 1979.
William H. Cunningham and John G. Klincewicz, "On Cycling in the Network Simplex Algorithm", 'Mathematical Programming', Volume 26, pages 182-189, North Holland, 1983.
Cunningham has long been at the Waterloo department of Combinatorics and Optimization.
Then, too, there is the guaranteed polynomial algorithm of D. Bertsekas. See:
Dimitri P. Bertsekas, 'Linear Network Optimization: Algorithms and Codes', ISBN 0-262-02334-2, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1991.
But, if Google calls you, don't mention such things if you want a job! Instead, just mumble on about how great C++ is!
"Oh, I have Stroustrup under my pillow!"
Also mention some other buzz words.
Google has become arrogant, inwardly directed, and process-oriented. The history of companies that do that is not good.
Network linear programming does not even have a Wikipedia article; you expect every candidate to have read some complex and specific literature about it?