As a lucratively employed Silicon Valley engineer, I’ve never seen leetcode. Not even sure what it looks like or how it works.
And that’s with being an immigrant from eastern-ish europe.
But it sure is fun to flog on it as a meme. I doubt more than 30% of engineers working in SV startups ever actually used leetcode. And I certainly wouldn’t hire anyone above absolute junior based on their leeting skillz.
Have you worked at a publicly traded SV company that pays comparable to MSFT, Amazon, FB, Google or Apple with good stock growth? Nowadays there are startups that don't do algo interviews, so if you've been lucky, then you've never encountered that interview type.
Leetcode is shorthand for algo interview prep, there are many alternatives to leetcode itself.
No, he's only worked at Yup in SV AFAICT. Maybe he's making $400K+/yr there but I'm somewhat skeptical. It could be his perspective on what is lucrative is very different having come from eastern europe and maybe comparing to there rather than to FAANG TC or what a soon-to-IPO company TC would be. (e.g. Instacart)
I've interviewed with 100+ companies in the bay. His experience is not representative of the industry at all, IMO... 90% of companies use leetcode here. Again, I need to emphasize, I've interviewed with way more companies than most people and most of my peers interview with dozens as well and they all have to grind leetcode.
Fair. And no, I haven't worked at a publicly traded company nor would I really want to. The optionality makes for good leverage in salary negotiation though.
From what I can tell when interviewing engineers, most over-index on the algorithms. Sure we all ask an algorithms question, but it's more of a checkbox. It's the other 6 interviews that tell us way way more about the candidate.
And yes, I could get more at Facebook, Google, or Apple, but then I'd have to work for FB, Goog, or App.
I think you should try to interview at a few of those places, then you'll understand why everyone focuses on the algo parts. If you fail one interview type, it's very rare that you will get an offer, and it pisses you off that you failed one interview because it was some left field random algo question that you haven't encountered before.
The rest of the interview types are fairly easy to prepare for, you almost do not have to, just do a few interview loops with your lower priority companies and your mostly good.
I also would reconsider not working at a pubicly traded company. I used to work in a startup for years, and I regret not switching sooner. Dan luu summarizes my thoughts on it: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
I've never had a startup offer to pay close to what FAANG gives in terms of compensation. And no the equity worth as much as pre-COVID toilet paper doesn't count.
edit: And I've never seen a startup offer enough equity to offset the average risk of that equity being worth nothing (and things like not being able to invest the money). It's fine to take a gamble, the payout can be nice, but in terms of average expected money after X years startups are light years away from FAANG in my experience.
And that’s with being an immigrant from eastern-ish europe.
But it sure is fun to flog on it as a meme. I doubt more than 30% of engineers working in SV startups ever actually used leetcode. And I certainly wouldn’t hire anyone above absolute junior based on their leeting skillz.