I agree. I was pursuing an SRE position at Google but their interview prep material was a lot of nitty-gritty "What does it mean when this syscall returns this

I agree. I was pursuing an SRE position at Google but their interview prep material was a lot of nitty-gritty "What does it mean when this syscall returns this integer?" questions that I didn't consider worth memorizing. In addition to the syscall questions, linux internals question, the bit of leetcode sprinkled in, there was also the practical exam of diagnosing a problem in a live system - I felt pretty confident in that however since it was my everyday for the last 3 years. I switched tracks to the normal software engineer with only-leetcode interview questions. Spent 3 weeks studying and last week I went in and had an easy time because it was exactly what I studied for. Also applying to a few other dev shops was effortless because they asked the same stuff.