[sam2426679]

Probably an unpopular, "grass is always greener" opinion, but this is why leetcode-style interviews can be a good thing at FAANG. Anyone with time and an internet connection can gain experience with data structures and algorithms via leetcode, whereas it's much harder to get hands-on experience with scaling real transactions-per-second on your own. And, as contrived as leetcode is, it does measure something about your ability to grok how code and infra scale against time and space.

[tough]

How reasonable is for a non-us based developer to even try?

FAANG positions in Europe are OK-ish but not such a deal breaker to me to dedicate so much time to -useless- stuff, I'd rather build cool shit

[itronitron]

The people I know (US-based developers) hired by FAANG were all very recently out of college, graduate school, or academia. Everyone else is focusing their time on diving deep into the technical issues they are faced with...

[itronitron]

>> as contrived as leetcode is, it does measure something about your ability to grok how code and infra scale against time and space

While that is certainly possible, I don't think that is typically the case in leetcode style interviews...