[eesmith]

It seems in poor taste to respond to someone specifically criticizing LeetCode questions, by using your experience in non-LeetCode evaluations.

I too did competitive programming. A team working together to prioritize from a list of programming tasks which cannot all be completed in time even by the best team is a far cry from a LeetCode interview problem.

[GuB-42]

There are different kinds of programming competitions. Some are about solving relatively easy problems individually and as fast as possible, which is most of what I did. The best candidates usually can solve all the problems and time determines the winner. Others are about solving hard problems, sometimes as a team, like in a hackathon. I was talking about the former.

I also did a mock LeetCode-style evaluation, which my company made me do as a benchmark. It was a lot like the kind of competitive programming I mentioned. But I don't count it as an experience because it was not a high-stakes, stressful situation. Note that I had no say on the recruitment process, they just asked me and other employees to do the test to see what to expect from someone of our skill levels, it also included some other, more knowledge-oriented questions.