[yzmtf2008]

In my experience, doing leetcode to such an extent is in general useless for job searches. Companies are not stupid, and your ability in solving the technical problem is only a very small part of the interview rubric. I’ve done 5, maybe 10 leetcode problems and never had an issue interviewing.

[mceachen]

Having been on several different company hiring boards and reviewed literally thousands of interviewer feedback posts, let me assure you that interviewers happily ask leetcode questions: even when they've been told expressly not to ask leetcode questions by their company.

The fact is that most software engineers just don't think interviewing is an important part of their job, so there's no impetuous to improve. They were probably asked leetcode questions when _they_ were interviewed, so that's the established norm.

[seanmcdirmid]

Leetcode questions also have well defined paths for success. Coming up with your own untested question is not guaranteed to be as productive in the interview. And once you’ve developed and used your question enough to be tested, it’s up on leetcode anyways.

Goodhart’s law is unbreakable.

[trophycase]

Counterpoint. My Google interview was entirely whiteboard leetcode problems. There wasn't a single non-technical aspect of the whole interview.

[zdragnar]

Same for Amazon- hours of it. That was the last time I went to an interview without first asking about the interview format. Had I known what I was walking into, I would have laughed at them and turned the interview down.

In fact, I did exactly that to a company somewhat recently (small fish pretending to be FAANG rockstars) though without the laughing bit.

[seanmcdirmid]

Lucky. I found the culture fit and architecture interview rounds to be the most difficult.

[mianos]

It may be only a very small part but not knowing how to invert a binary tree may well knock you out of the process. The process is designed to cull as many people as possible as early in the process as possible. It is accepted they might miss a few good people but it is more important that don't hire a bad one.

[hintymad]

You don’t need leetcode to know how to invert a binary tree. You need solid foundation on algorithm and data structure, both of which are still relevant today.

[milofeynman]

I don't know a single person across my org that will ever have to invert a binary tree. It's a hilarious problem that helps people who know it's a kind of problem asked, and hurts those who walk into it blind.

[thereare5lights]

> Companies are not stupid, and your ability in solving the technical problem is only a very small part of the interview rubric.

I've not interviewed at a single company in the bay area where this is true.

[derwiki]

It’s maybe a small part but the first part—-the technical phone screwn. Maybe I’m in the minority but I don’t write semi obscure algorithms for my day job so I need explicit prep for TPS.

[epinephrinios]

There are a lot of top paying jobs (e.g. FB) that you would never get into without LC grinding.