However I just landed a job at a company whose interview process was very practical, had zero leetcode, and while not FAANGMULA, apparently still considered on par (if not better than some letters) with them in prestige and pay. A lot of my new team/department seems to be alumni from FAANGMULA or other brand name tech companies; I'm the odd man out coming from a boring kludgy old school conservative non-tech company.
Shocking. I literally attribute the experience to an Act of God.
The only downside I can think of is that all those years grinding leetcode proved to be worthless here. That's not to say the overwhelming majority of good companies are still probably gatekeeped with leetcode though, so I'm sure it will still come in handy one day. An Leetcode A Day Keeps Unemployment Away.
Man how? I’ve actually been shocked by the number of companies that do use these and have struggled to find jobs that don’t use these. The few that don’t tend to either not pay well, have some other sort of god awful criteria or just never work out.