Yes, Leetcode pushes you to the top. SWE often divided into two camps, those who really refuse to do leetcode and those who do it because they know it will give them advantage.

Leetcode actually does make you a better engineer, provided you study deeply for it. Ofc it has diminishing returns, but you are already ahead of the game 99% of the time if you are doing Leetcode.

ChatGPT will make some students lazier, and will make some students better. Those students who can use ChatGPT correctly, by taking and observing the output and synthesizing it with their own understanding, will be ahead of the game. Students who are lazy and just copy pasting ChatGPT answers won't, but McDonald's employment is still open for them.