yep. And you typically do change jobs every few years just to get a raise or promotion.

Which means... Always. Be. Leetcoding. Do the bare minimum at your job and then do LC the rest of the time. Because your job is just your job, but your career is LC. These companies don't yet realize they are optimizing for mercenaries that have no loyalty to the code nor the company.

On a slight tangent, some of the people over on Blind would sell their own mother for a tiny bump in TC. That mentality used to be limited to Wall St. or maybe Big 4 accounting firms, etc. But now it's the whole tech industry. I remember having a software job was a lot more fun, back around 2007ish. That culture is so foreign to me now.

It's what happens when an industry is awash in dumb money. Startups are seen as either half-baked schemes trying to get a cut of the VC funding pie, or cheap R&D labs for the big tech companies in search for inevitable acquisitions. The big tech companies who originally made their money delivering goods or services of real value, squander that goodwill through oligopolistic rent-seeking, engaging in shady anti-competitive or anti-consumer behavior, and endlessly building derivative, short-lived products that users don't actually want in hopes of inflating their moats. In a milieu such as this, engineers become mercenaries because "making the world a better place" has become a tired old cliche, both false and naive. Just a lot of cynicism all around.

I'm quite certain that making people dread interviewing is part of the point. Else why keep making people who've already passed multiple times, do it again? First FAANG to start routinely letting people who've already passed a couple similar interviews at peer companies in without repeating the leetcode-hazing, then the other companies have to do it, too, now suddenly the rate-of-increase of software developer pay's even faster than it already is, which none of them want.

Even having to pass such a test on a very aggressive set schedule—say, every 5 years—but only at those set times, would be better—for developers. Not for the companies hiring them.