Let’s talk about the absolute nonsense that is the LeetCode grind. For some reason, this platform has become the holy grail of tech interviews—like solving arbitrary data structure problems will somehow prove whether or not you can be a good developer. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. Not even close.
What’s insane is that new developers, and even experienced ones, are dedicating weeks or even months of their lives grinding out LeetCode problems like they’re training for the Olympics. And for what? To figure out how to shave off 0.05 seconds from an algorithm? Because let’s be real here, no one’s doing that in their day-to-day job.
Real Programming Isn’t About Puzzle-Solving
In the actual world of programming, you’re not sitting around solving algorithmic puzzles all day. You’re working in an established codebase with defined structures, established practices, and deliverables that matter. There’s nothing “abstract” about it. You’re tasked with taking real-world business problems and crafting practical solutions. You need to think about maintainability, scalability, technical debt, and, most importantly, the product.
No one is asking you to solve a recursive tree traversal problem in 99% of programming jobs. Sure, those concepts are important in theory. You learn them in school, you apply them when it’s necessary, but that’s about it. The reality is you’re working on APIs, building features, maintaining systems, optimizing code, or even dealing with legacy spaghetti code. And none of that has anything to do with LeetCode-style questions.
Grinding for the Sake of What?
So why, then, are developers—both fresh out of school and ten years deep—getting sucked into this grind? Because somewhere along the way, the tech interview process got hijacked by this bizarre notion that the ability to solve esoteric algorithm problems is equivalent to being a competent developer.
You’ve got experienced engineers spending every spare minute grinding out increasingly obscure problems on LeetCode just to land an interview. What happened to reviewing someone’s real experience? You know, the work they’ve done that actually exists—contributions to open source, shipped products, real-world business solutions they’ve delivered through their code. Why has that taken a backseat to “how fast can you optimize this sorting algorithm?”
The whole obsession is not only insane but also a colossal waste of time.
Real Problem Solving Is Business-Driven
What LeetCode completely misses is the essence of actual problem-solving. In the real world, you don’t start with a perfectly defined problem. You don’t know what edge cases are in advance, and the solution isn’t some optimal algorithm that fits neatly into a 30-minute coding session.
You’re working with stakeholders who barely know how to articulate what they need, dealing with shifting requirements, and managing projects where constraints aren’t about milliseconds of execution time—they’re about things like budget, deadlines, or user needs. Real programming involves compromise, trade-offs, and finding solutions that actually work for the business.
If you’re spending hours every day tweaking an algorithm to save some microscopic amount of runtime, you’re missing the point. Tech is about delivering value, not winning some imaginary contest.
LeetCode Obsession Feeds Into Toxic Interview Practices
The toxic cycle of LeetCode obsession doesn’t stop at wasted time—it plays right into the larger problem of interview practices in the tech industry. We’ve already got this multi-level interview process that feels more like a TV game show than a job application. But now, on top of that, companies are throwing in arbitrary algorithm tests like they’re the true measure of your abilities as a developer.
It’s ridiculous. First, you pass the phone screen, then you’re grilled by a hiring manager, and then, surprise! You’ve got a three-hour coding challenge where you’re expected to solve problems that have no bearing on the actual work you’d be doing if you got the job. It’s like auditioning for a chef position by solving math problems about how fast you can slice a carrot.
Let’s be clear—just because you can write an algorithm that passes some contrived test case doesn’t mean you can deliver quality software in a real-world environment. But thanks to LeetCode mania, we’ve lost sight of that.
Let’s Stop the Madness
We need to wake up and recognize that grinding out LeetCode problems is not a good use of anyone’s time. It’s not representative of the work you’ll do in the real world. It’s not a fair measure of your skills as a developer. And it certainly doesn’t prove whether or not you’re good at solving actual problems—the kind that businesses pay you to fix.
Instead of worshiping at the altar of algorithm challenges, let’s refocus on what really matters: solving real problems, building scalable and maintainable systems, delivering business value, and understanding the context in which our code operates. If your ability to do that isn’t good enough for a company, then maybe that company needs to rethink what they’re actually looking for in a developer.
LeetCode grinding has become a pointless rite of passage that needs to die out, and the sooner, the better. We should stop pretending that churning out solutions to contrived problems makes us better developers. It doesn’t. It’s time to stop glorifying this practice and focus on what really matters—writing code that solves real-world problems.