[dan-robertson]

I agree leetcode interviews are pretty stupid, and there are plenty of skilled professionals who suck at that sort of interview (even if they are quite good at finding good hires it can be silly for most companies to use them as candidates who do well will likely have many competing offers from other leetcode interviewers.)

When I was at university a lot of people studied hard for somewhat bullshit exams that had little relevance to the work they we’re expecting to be doing for the rest of their lives. And people paid the university for the privilege of getting to take those exams. The purpose of this studying was achieving good grades and the value of these grades was an increased expected value for lifetime earnings. But this value is probably lower than naively looking at statistics would suggest: ambitious, hardworking, or clever students were more likely to do well in exams and those people would likely do well later in life too even if they had food poisoning and failed their exams.

In comparison, it seems to me that job interviewing costs a lot less than getting a degree and the payoff is potentially larger, more direct, and more immediate. It seems that the pain of studying and practicing bullshit leetcode questions is outweighed by the benefit of, say, a 50% pay rise or equivalent quality of life improvement, and I don’t think a moral stance against leetcode is strong enough to justify turning down such opportunities.

But maybe you feel more strongly about this moral position than me. Or maybe you are one of those competent people who can’t do well at this sort of interview even with studying and practice. Certainly such people exist.

[noleetcode]

For myself it's a combination of morals as well as the fact that I've simply become so depressed due to my current place of work that I don't think I have the capability to engage in the prep work, never mind that particular type of interview itself.

To lend some credence to the former (the morals) - I have succeeded at leetcode hazefests in the past. I've worked at two mega-cap tech companies, and the last time I seriously interviewed (half a decade ago...) I was successful at multiple companies (all of which took each and every interview session from a page of leetcode, or if I was really "lucky", CtCI)

So I expect if I could get over the depression (not likely) I could probably prepare and maybe even succeed. But even then I don't think it's something I'm willing to give on, even though the rewards for myself would likely be substantial.

(Similarly, I also refuse to interview candidates at my current employer, as they insist on the same thing)