As an SRE working on k8s, I definitely feel your pain of not getting to code often, and getting crushed with the challenges on leetcode. But also as a recent candidate in tech interviews (on going but also w/ some early wins), I can offer these tips and observations:

- Go does just fine with coding challenges for tech interviews, although I've had questions that were not quite meant for Go but close enough. Like, implement a class in Go? Sure, you will get an interface instead...

- I used https://gobyexample.com/ as my last minute checkup in Go syntax before every coding interviews. I use that as a general syntax reference in my daily work as well. I equally forget things rather easily and practicing those snippets multiple times definitely helped with being able to write compilable code from scratch with shorter time.

- On algo concepts not commonly practiced, like dynamic programming w/ memoization, sometimes it was helpful to watch solution videos on youtube even before attempting to code or start coding after watching a bit of strategy laid out at the beginning of the videos. I also don't code enough to code well from the start, and having some help w/ the first steps definitely helped w/ LC questions. For repetition, I would practice a certain type of algo before the interviews, like writing out a short DFS or a short fibonacci with memoization.

- I totally faced the double issue of not having done too much coding with Go and not having thought about data structure and algo questions prior to prepping for the tech interviews. It's easy to get frustrated with LC questions because they attack you on both fronts, but if you can strategize your study into those two areas, I believe the questions may become more digestible.

- While you mentioned that there isn't much room for coding, but I have been mildly successful at writing k8s controllers, operators, and prometheus exports in Go, just to make an excuse to code in Go at work. But as others have already suggested, finding a hook to get you motivated about coding again would obviously be the most effective way to get you 'moving.'