[clusterhacks]

Smart and works hard is important but I'm very much not convinced that success in competitive programming (or leet-coding in interviews) is the only, or even best, way to signal those attributes to an employer.

I'll also contradict myself on how important smart and works hard actually is. I'm just a normal programmer who has had a few normal programming jobs. The vast majority of my career has been about doing relatively low-key programming and data munging. When I think back on software engineers "in the trenches" of standard corporate jobs I don't see any deep need to be particularly smart and hard working. Maybe "doggedly stubborn" about not giving up and making some progress each day instead.