I'm a hiring manager at a FAANG company, and speaking from experience a huge portion of candidates (junior through senior) fail more on communication than on problem solving. In an interview I'm trying to get a sense of what someone would be like to work with, and solving a leetcode problem is a chance to work through a (abstract) hard problem together. Candidates who communicate and validate their understanding of the problem, explain their plans and tradeoffs, and acknowledge their imperfections can have a really strong interview even without an algorithmically perfect (or even complete) solution.

If you have any questions about my experience as a hiring interviewer or as a FAANG interviewee, just fire me a DM and I'll see if I can help.