I recently switched jobs, and this time I decided that during the first phase of any interview cycle I would ask if there were going to be leetcode-style questions at any point in the cycle. If yes, I ended the interviews there. If no, continue on. I was of course happy to explain my logic and that I was happy to demonstrate technical prowess in a way more useful to the proposed role.

One company lied, I completed the leetcode-style portion of the technical interview, and politely declined their offer (with an explanation that I don’t like being lied to, and beyond that, I don’t want to work for a company that believes leetcode is a useful skill indicator for regular development work).

So far every company that I’ve worked for doesn’t do leetcode bs, and end up being great companies to work for (genuinely caring about employees, good salary/benefits, actual CoL adjustments in addition to merit-based raises, equity, etc). Small sample size, I know. I also know that every one of my tech friends who has worked at a leetcode-interview company has had some kind of issue with colleagues, management, company structure, or something along those lines (not necessarily at every company, but each person has encountered those sorts of things at at least one company).

To me, avoiding leetcode is a very good way to select for “actual good” companies to work for.