Leetcode.com is a site that preps you for interviews like that and claims to have the interview question sets for FAANG and FAANG-like companies.
Maybe. It depends on how much innate talent you do have. Talent isn't an on off switch. It's a spectrum. It's possible to have enough talent to be a genius, to be just below a genius, to be good enough, but also to not even be good enough to reach a minimal employable threshold. It depends on the person.
>The industry needs tens of millions of programmers, for all kinds of levels, not only innate-talent-software-gurus.
But who gets the best rewards?
Somebody else. Which is the case for 99.999% of the population, so?
Being able to show up and do the work is table stakes –– and yes, I actually write efficient algorithms in my day-to-day because we process massive amounts of data. But the algos I write were invented 50, 60 years ago. My leetcode study process was to look up the solution and then memorize it through rote practice. Why reinvent the wheel? I'm not trying to win a Turing prize here.
But your intellectual mettle and day to day happiness in the company is tested by your ability to deal with people.
So? You might never go "where you want to go" (some monetary compensasion?). It might be unreachable or a pipe dream for most and/or for you.
That's true.
>not everyone is lucky enough to be intellectually gifted to succeed and not all hard work pays off
That's also true.
The part about quiting programming though is a non sequitur. You don't need to have innate talent to do something, or even to do it well, you just need to get good at it.
And you can get good enough to do things without getting genius level great, or even good at the level (or with the ease) of the person with the innate talent.
Know the old adage "good enough to do some real damage" (damage meant complimentary, as in "to do stuff")? That's the spirit.
The industry needs tens of millions of programmers, for all kinds of levels, not only innate-talent-software-gurus.
I don't even know what leetcode is (I assume from this post it's some kind of education site, or a website with problems to solve to get better, like Project Euler or something).