Because adults with hobbies and families have better things to do. How is this so hard to grasp? Bonus is that 90% of devs literally will not use most of that knowledge.

My biggest problems are getting requirements, understanding the problem, working around a legacy system or deciphering old code, not actually writing code when requirements and documentation is on point.

> Because adults with hobbies and families have better things to do

If you really valued your time you would spend a week studying for the interview that gives you a 50pct or more increase in salary so you can work that many fewer years

I never said I didn’t grind or I won’t grind to move up. It doesn’t change my opinion.

To be fair grinding Leetcode to the point of proficiency takes longer than a week.

With that said I agree on your other point, putting in the work and sacrificing time, even months, will pay dividends long-term with a salary that allows someone to retire early.

If you are willing to spend your younger, healthier years grinding just to (potentially, there are so many things that are outside of your control that can go wrong no matter your work ethic) get a few more years of retirement at the end of your life - then sure. Grind away.

You can work 80% and still earn more, so you have more time your whole life.

These interviews are not designed to require "spending your younger, healthier years grinding". They require grokking a fairly small set of concepts and being comfortable using them to problem solve under time pressure. That's it.

Hearing some people, you'd think they ask you to memorize chess openings or something.

That's because it is memorizing chess openings, or basically equivalent.

Most Leetcode Mediums fall into the category where the type of solution is obvious (sliding window/graph search/etc), and the code isn't hard to write, but there's a "trick" embedded in the problem and if you don't already know the trick, you're never going to figure it out in 30 minutes.

So the best strategy is to find a "Top N Leetcodes" list like Blind 75 and just memorize them. Of course you can't expect those exact questions to come up in every interview, but having a few dozen solutions already memorized should let you do some pattern recognition and lower your cognitive load while you're trying to figure out what that problem's trick is.

> Most Leetcode Mediums (...) there's a "trick" embedded in the problem and if you don't already know the trick, you're never going to figure it out in 30 minutes

I am sorry to say, this is just not true.

> but having a few dozen solutions already memorized should let you do some pattern recognition

Chess opening memorization is pure "remember the moves, play the moves" that's it. No thinking or pattern recognition involved.

If this is about being able to solve problems by generalizing from having seen a few dozen solutions, then I don't think "memorizing" is the appropriate term here, at all.

Do you have any evidence that isn't true? How often do truly new problems come up? Nearly every problem I see is after someone gets an an algorithm named after them.

While it is true there are many factors outside of our control I'm still going to prepare the best I can for the factors that are in my control. FAANG salaries allow someone to retire decades earlier which is the significant amount of time

But it still feels wrong if progression is measured by an arbitrary measure orthogonal to what one actually does in one's career, no?

Leetcode isn't progression, it is changing to a better track. Progress on that track doesn't require leetcode, just entering it.

In the context of this conversation we are discussing Leetcode as the status quo primary means of passing interviews for new, higher-paying jobs at FAANG-equivalent companies, as career advancement.

Surely you'd find something to discuss about one's previous twenty years of building software. Especially if the last ten years have been in the same domain. Somehow it all worked just fine before 2010 or so. Also, one's tolerance for silly things and short-term memory for useless puzzles don't increase with age.

You know you live in a clown world when memorizing nonsense makes one more employable than learning some front-end stuff to be a little more full-stacky.

One problem is that they keep making the leetcode interviews harder because many people spend a lot of practicing. Simply solving a problem isn't good enough anymore. Now you have to solve two problems in 40-45 minutes with the optimal solution. The only way I've been able to solve two problems in 40-45 minutes is if I've seen the problem before.

> Domain specific knowledge grilling?

Why would you not do this? If I’m hiring for a specific role, I want to make sure they are good at that role. Doubly so if their resume states they’re an expert at something - let’s find out.

This doesn’t need to be hostile or one-upping, but to prove someone’s actual depth of knowledge in an area they claim to have expertise in.