[Mc91]

We say grind out Leetcode, because if someone can't do a Leetcode medium (or hard) like finding a cycle in a linked list in a few minutes, it diminishes their chances of getting into FAANG. It might be the bare minimum nowadays, but if they can't do even that, it is where they should start.

We're not telling people to grind Leetcode because we think Leetcode is great, we're telling people to grind Leetcode because this is usually one of the steps you need to do to get in.

[ActorNightly]

From my personal experience, those people even during the pandemic hiring craze weren't making it in. Because once I start asking you questions about your experience, things quickly fall apart if you don't understand software dev

I dunno how other companies work, but when it came to Amazon, if you were struggling with a coding problem, and I gave you a hint on the solution, and you ran with it, usually that wasn't a big concern if you could talk about your experience (even during basic college projects), where you showed evidence of being able to deferentially think about things, not just follow patterns that you have been taught.

I do agree that you should know how to do Leetcode and spend time practicing, but grinding them out isn't what I would recommend. The vast majority of Leetcode medium problems are some form of pointer manipulation, linked list (single, trees, or n way like Trie structure), and some O Log N search, which usually involves a sorted data set. The key to learn is how to map a problem into those things, and how to operate on them, not how to solve a specific set of problems.

Its the same reason why ECE/EE people usually have no issue getting coding jobs at FAANG, because they are so used to low level memory operations and optimizations on how to do stuff that they can easily recognize the patterns.