yea dawg maybe if you graduated in the last 4 years lmao

Applicants definitely peak in their leet code ability at graduation. Probably doesn't help that they're have lots of free time and motivation to grind for their first job. It's a mistake to hold more senior people to same standard.

The harder leetcode interviews I've had, I definitely was not prepared for simply from college material. Some companies really throw the kitchen sink at you.

The more reasonable coding interviews I've had, on the other hand, I could have solved before even going to college. Those companies were (rightfully) just trying to get a sense for whether you can write and debug code in the real world, not memorize algorithms.