I've been through a few different types of interviews and the random algorithm style seems off to me. I recognize that there are companies like FAANGs that want

I've been through a few different types of interviews and the random algorithm style seems off to me. I recognize that there are companies like FAANGs that want a deep bench and will have expert algorithm people on-call for that one time when it's needed. Most companies should be OK to just present real problems either solved or being worked on which they would expect applicants to be able to solve. This is more true for startups that need less know "how to reverse a binary string" and more "how to properly design a database with 3rd order normalization", etc. If you're presenting an interview question, it should have actual job relevance and your co-workers should be able to solve it in the same time as the candidate. If you're drilling people on non-job qualities (e.g. invert a binary tree for a web dev role...) then you should expect a large difference between audience that can pass your bad interview tests and audience which will perform well at actual job. Not trying to complain. I think job interviews should focus more on the 99% of what you do in your job on a Tuesday. Poor interviews seem to be more gotchas and algorithm tricks to disqualify roles which have little actual use for algos + data structures. The tests might seem too easy but as a front-end engineer I would rather be with a coworker which understands the CSS box model, knows semantic markup for accessibility, and similar web things than a person which is good at creating hash tables and doubly-linked lists in JS. Leet code probably doesn't test vertical centering techniques with CSS but if you're applying for a web dev position you better know them.