Except that universities now prepare you for leetcode and those who studies in them do better at leetcode. By that I mean that there are actual classes to train you leetcode like exercises.
On the other, preparing for the test is not gaming it. Fundamentally, if there is a test, it is entirely legitimate and expected to prepade for it. Especially when the test measures skills you rarely use outside of test.
I've understood that the original idea of the Google interviews and others was to see if the applicant can write code at all, has been awake at second year CS class and can apply the ideas on the fly. The idea would have been that good candidates would be able to pass the test anyway. Of course it doesn't work if people start preparing a test that's supposed to be a proxy for other skills. For what it's worth, I've heard a rumor from Google that their interview system used to be quite OK at predicting employees' career development but competitive programmers consistently perform under the expectations because they've been specializing for events that are just like those interviews.
> I've understood that the original idea of the Google interviews and others was to see if the applicant can write code at all, has been awake at second year CS class and can apply the ideas on the fly.
This requires waaay more easier test. This goal does not requires escalation of leetcode exercises difficulty at all. If this was actual goal, the test could have been truly simple instead of requiring a lot of preparation to pass.
Especially:
> has been awake at second year
What is actual difference between learning those in second year of the school vs on your own when you find out employer wants it?
> This goal does not requires escalation of leetcode exercises difficulty at all.
Ok, looks like we've done different leetcode exercises. The ones I have done seemed to test mostly that I was able to sit down and type for an hour. Which, to be honest, is too much for many.
> What is actual difference between learning those in second year of the school vs on your own when you find out employer wants it?
The idea is that the employer should be able to give you real problems and trust that you have the basic toolkit to solve them without too much handholding. At least I have never been asked to implement this or that algorithm at work, but there have been quite a few times when one was needed to solve a problem.
