I've met and had the misfortune of working with folks who have gotten jobs via beers-and-handshakes interviews. Supposed "lead" and "senior" engineers who couldn't comprehend basic control flow, who wanted, and attempted(!), to write their own Rails clone, Flux clone, etc.

Just like leadership and managerial tasks are not related to actual coding, talking about and evangelizing some library or technology does not mean you're a competent software engineer. They are very different skills.

Nah, this type of anecdote is overblown, usually by people with a vested interest in keeping leetcode-like interview puzzles as a gatekeeper barrier to hiring and internal advancement.

Well that’s just a false dichotomy. One can provide a coding challenge that isn’t a lame “gotcha” puzzle.

In theory sure, it just doesn’t happen in tech interviewing though.

Well, anecdotally, it absolutely does happen in tech interviewing, and I'm saying that both as an interviewer and someone presently interviewing for a job.

Sounds like you've found yourself in an interviewing rut.

No, been in the same job happily for a while & not currently interviewing. I am also an engineering manager and happy to be out of the hell of rank and file engineering interviewing in my career.

It’s just a widespread, deep culture problem in tech interviewing. The questions and evaluation procedures are set up to be pedantic oneupsmanship trivia, and are not rooted in psychologically healthy realities of the way people work or demonstrate skill or communication patterns.

Fizzbuzz is a leetcode puzzle?

Huh?

Every substantial program uses at least one data structure. The problem isn’t asking about data structures or even algorithms. It’s about asking leetcode.

I agree. Maybe to a limited extent I’d also say not accommodating the candidate’s working requirements (introvert vs extravert, choice of editor, time pressure) is another big part of it.