As I'm in a similar boat to the OP, this is exactly why I'm hesitant to even interview with any of these companies, even as a test to see where I stand, simply

As I'm in a similar boat to the OP, this is exactly why I'm hesitant to even interview with any of these companies, even as a test to see where I stand, simply because I fear I'd be blacklisted on some list these companies might share, should I bomb one without a lot of time spent reviewing. I sometimes follow a Reddit sub geared for mostly recent CS grads. Every week or two will be a post from someone who got a FAANG job, detailing what he did in order to pass the interview. And some of these are pretty absurd - graduating last semester and since then spending 6 months going through leetcode 6 hours a day, studying algorithms, paying for interview training classes, etc. And as an older guy who has a decent CS degree but hasn't needed to use 90% of anything related to algorithms in 15 years, I'd have to study a lot, and along with the numerous days of vacation time used for these interviews in California, it doesn't seem worth the effort.