[wffurr]

The stereotypical false positive is a competition programmer who aces whiteboard puzzles and leetcode type problems but isn't actually a good software engineer. They fall down at all the other parts that aren't clever programming.

Thankfully those are usually junior hires and can often be mentored into a good or excellent engineer.

[mountainriver]

There are also lots of people who are just bad engineers but memorize Leetcode problems. Most of Leetcode is memorization, and most of the people I see get hired at Leetcode establishments aren’t good engineers.

It’s just a bad test, why are people so hung up in it? Cause Google does it?

[Icathian]

People are hung up on it because it's the gate to making ridiculous amounts of money doing what we all enjoy.

Also, because there isn't really a "good" option for interviewing (especially at scale), the door is always left open for endless circular debates on the topic.