[AnimalMuppet]

> It is true: party trick Big O questions have low utility in most jobs. It is true: there is talent out there which sucks at Big-O questions. It is true: there are people who are good at little else than the party tricks. Nevertheless: those questions provide an objective judgement about a candidate. That objective judgement is valuable.

That objective judgment is valuable at something different from finding out whether people can actually do the job. So, not very valuable at the purpose that people try to use it for.

My last job interview cycle (January 2023), they asked me a ton about the specific details of C++. It was going to be very difficult to do as a dishonest candidate. I mean, you might make it as a language lawyer who doesn't actually code, but you'd have to be a genuine language lawyer. One phone interview, then a 2-hour in-person interview, then another phone interview with higher level people. That was it. There was one "what does this code do" problem, which takes people 5-15 minutes.

So my point is, you don't have to grind leetcode to get a software engineering job. You don't have to use leetcode to hire good software engineers, either. And if you do use leetcode as an interview filter, then you hire people who are good at grinding leetcode, which is not the same skill as writing software.