Comment by realharo

It's that trimodal-comp thing. The 6-hour leetcode gauntlet is only the overwhelming norm in the top hump of that graph. It's not normal in the other two (not that it's never seen, but the companies dumb enough to do it without offering FAANG-tier comp are shooting themselves in the foot). I've had, IDK, ten plus tech jobs and have been solidly in the middle comp tier for most of those, and have exactly once encountered anything resembling a leetcode question in the wild.

I've also done hiring, and have no idea what good leetcode would do me. I'm convinced these people thinking they "dodged a bullet" on "fakers" either spotted a real faker who they would have caught with a normal conversation anyway, or else are assuming someone with a good resume who failed their test did so because they were lying and not because they choked under the unique sort of pressure interviews present when you turn them into a dancing-monkey routine (it's approximately the same kind of stress as doing an open mic night or karaoke in front of a crowd of strangers—most people have trouble with that and lots of them fall apart at least some of the times they try it). Meanwhile, anyone who can talk about the job and their career in any depth, convincingly, without giving away that they're actually either very-green or have no idea what they're doing, while in fact not knowing how to do the job, possesses a skill at least as valuable as programming, and I find it hard to believe most such folks haven't figured out they can apply that skill directly in exchange for money instead of trying to fake their way through conversational tech interviews.

I do see how leetcode is valuable if you want to ensure that most of the candidates in your pipeline would do fine before you even evaluate them, because you offer high comp and need a way to discourage candidates who definitely can't make it before they even apply, and/or if you want to make job-hopping painful as a wink-and-nudge collusion way to keep comp suppressed. It makes sense for FAANG, in a certain way, but not because it's a good way to evaluate candidates per se.