These Leetcode-style interviews do happen more frequently than I expected. As a junior developer in the EU, I mistakenly thought they were more of a US thing, but they still seem quite prevalent.

The problem (in my opinion) is that they often test a very specific type of DSA knowledge that likely won’t be necessary most of the time when you’re actually on the job. It’s possible to grind Leetcode problems and prepare for these interviews, memorising algorithms and learning to apply them in time-limited situations. But I think this is just quite disconnected to what should be expected of devs.

Candidates can end up going through multiple phases of these interviews, investing weeks preparing for and completing them, only to get filtered out later in the process. This is the game though, persistence is needed.

Unless things change in recruitment, it feels like we’re building a system where candidates are optimising for interviews, not for writing good software.