You and me both. I just read a bit about the company before applying for the job. In the interview, I ask the interviewer only two questions: what’s the management style? Is it a servant leadership style with autonomous work, or is it a hierarchical task-based one? The second question is, what does an average day-to-day job look like? Sure, there are few stressful days and others are relaxed, but on average you can tell. Is it chaotic, always running against deadlines and having new tasks thrown at you, or is everything sorted out properly? Sometimes, I also ask about the meetings. I personally don’t like useless meetings. A lot of middle management uses meetings as part of the power dynamics and exerting power rather than actually discussing and solving issues.
As many people have pointed out, the interview process has diverged from real-world, day-to-day tasks you would be expected to accomplish once you get the job. Not actually being able to do a leetcode test (either due to lacking knowledge or interview stress) might not have any reflection on someones ability to succeed in the role they are interviewing for. How many people are dealing with sorting algorithms or traversing binary trees without access to the internet as part of their job?
I'd rather be rejected than got job I'm not qualified to do, that's why I never prepare for interview above studying the actual company- and that is more to give me proper signal if I want to work for them, I want to be motivated to make move on more than just money.
I also have never done leetcode, though I like competitive programming problems, especially bot programming contests on codingame.com