I've never had any very difficult technical questions at my interviews, just basic familiarity with the domain. The hard part seems to be getting the interview

I've never had any very difficult technical questions at my interviews, just basic familiarity with the domain. The hard part seems to be getting the interview at all. Out of college I sent out to hundreds of places and got one interview offering an abysmal 30k, then at some point got contacted out of the blue by a recruiter for a big company. The email was so badly written (different font faces/colors/sizes, bad English) I thought it was possibly a scam, but then that turned out to be an easy and very well-paying job for someone starting out. Then the next place said I was the best candidate they ever interviewed because I answered some basic language questions clearly. My conclusion has been that hiring in this field is just confusing and nonsensical, and you never know what you're gonna get, but you probably don't need to touch anything like leetcode unless you're shooting for Google. I don't think these cheesy interview questions like writing a circular linked list or implementing Conway's Game of Life should even take any "grinding" if you have good fundamentals. I almost feel shorted that I never got a question like how I would measure the depth of the ocean with an apple, as the article parodies it, since I find that kind of thing fun and interesting.