> I understand the need for the elite to be brain surgeons, but for a vast majority of professions, the filtering for elite is not conducive to a healthy village.

Filtering for surgeons really is:

- Who can afford a completely unrelated undergrad before even applying to med school

- Who can afford to fly and meet with hospitals for residency spots

- Who can be the most sleep deprived during residency (completely useless)

> Leetcode is fine, but the trend I’m hearing is that it is getting more and more absurd and somewhat becoming our version of the same gate-keeping that makes finance, law, politics, etc bad.

Really, it's possible to bypass leetcoding by just taking a good algorithm and data structure class.