I’ve never been good at tests in school. I probably averaged Cs on tests through college. Projects though? Aced them every time and sometimes got pulled aside and told I was highly exceeding the projects of others in the class. I just do well when I can think alone, or when I can actually work toward a solution with a coworker.
I’ve made the companies I work for millions of dollars. But put me in front of a white board and ask me an algorithm question? You’d think I was fresh out of CS101.
1. You're a newgrad. You have no work history, but you do have a lot of time on your hands and a desire to prove yourself. Go study leetcode and prove how awesome you are.
2. You're a senior engineer who has a small network (not a dig, lots of great developers are introverted and have small networks, myself included). In this case, it sucks but... just practice leetcode. Don't worry, the fact that you're a good engineer means you'll pick it up quickly. It's not the same skill as professional software development, but there's a ton of skill transfer, and it might even be a little fun.
Time crunch, test anxiety etc, those can be overcome by practicing. A lot of times really smart people are averse to practicing since they never had to do it in school. But, I'm telling you, any smart dev can learn to leetcode well while being timed. It'll be fine
Leetcode is effectively the opposite, because each one is usually a CS paper by itself, which by definition took a very hard problem a long time for a very smart person to create and test the solution.
You cannot practically invent the a leetcode solution from whole cloth if you treat it like an IQ test question should be done. It's a sport and you get good at sports via drills until it become muscle memory.
Believe it or not, most humans on earth can study as long as they want for leetcode and still won't do well on them. If you can drill and study for them and your scores improve... bam: that's the IQ test.
LeetCode is the _opposite_ of an IQ test. LeetCode tests one's ability to memorize, recognize, & regurgitate information in a timed test.
What? No. You need to practice to be truly effective at Leetcode.
Fact is that no job can give a reasonable test for how it is to work there short of working there. There's team dynamics, developer / project fit, etc etc. All you can ever do is measure some proxies. Leetcode is just a much better proxy than the old "how many ping-pong balls fit in a school bus" questions.