[WDCDev]

They think it's about gotcha questions and they think they fail because they didn't leetcode hard enough.

But ... if you read some of the feedback from interviewers at "those companies" that rely on these interviews, they say the reason they failed someone is exactly because they "didn't leetcode hard enough". It is manifested as:

"Well other candidates got the same solution as you, they just did it 10 minutes faster"

or

"You missed an edge case, even though your core algorithm was correct".

This is a huge issue with these interviews. It's all too easy for interviewers to evaluate candidates based on how fast, correct, neat or "complete" you answer was. It's easy and takes no time.

[redisman]

Agreed, thats a disingenuous point. "It's not about getting the right answer but the way you think". I've never found that to be true. If you don't get to the right answer, you're gone. If they planned to ask two questions and you only got through one, you're gone no matter how you "thought" about it. A huge part of this is Leetcode practice. If you can't solve most algorithm questions on whiteboard in less than an hour (because you haven't practiced) then you won't pass any interviews.

[mrep]

> "You missed an edge case, even though your core algorithm was correct".

That may have been a reason why I have failed some interviews but I feel like most interviewers are actually good about this and will say something along the lines of "what about this input?" where my code does not work and then I have that "oh shit, that won't work for that" and then I fix it.