In order to prepare for eng manager interviews a couple of years back, I quit my job and spent several months on Leetcode and system design. This is with 8 year

In order to prepare for eng manager interviews a couple of years back, I quit my job and spent several months on Leetcode and system design. This is with 8 years of management experience at the time and many years without hands-on coding. I landed a FAANG job as a result, something I would have 100% not been able to accomplish without the prep, so I suppose it was worth the effort. The not-at-all-surprising end result is that my role has no coding or system design expectation, nor is there time for that even if I wanted it. I'm exactly the same person, doing a not-entirely-dissimilar job to my prior experience, yet I would not have been considered a desirable candidate had I not jumped through these hoops that bear no relation to actual responsibilities. Now that I'm on the inside, I don't see any particular conspiracy to select for people that are willing to jump through hoops. Yet I have a hard time reasoning out why else my candidacy would undergo such a drastic transformation otherwise. It's a sad state of affairs indeed.