SWE with 6-ish yrs of exp. I get good annual reviews, have been promoted consistently, good feedback overall from not only peers but from higher-level managers,

SWE with 6-ish yrs of exp. I get good annual reviews, have been promoted consistently, good feedback overall from not only peers but from higher-level managers, business folks, designers, legal, content /copywriters. But according to leetcode and the FAANG interview process, I am not worthy of employment at any of big tech companies, and I failed a lot of those interviews. I love coding and tech, but leetcode makes me hate it. If I lacked self-esteem, I would not be in a good emotional state, which is something that does concern me - being rejected by many companies can take an emotional toll on a person's emotional health. The good news for folks like me is that there are enough companies that will interview me on relevant skills and $200K-ish TC is enough to live well, especially with good work / life balance. FAANGs and start-ups are shooting themselves in the foot with the interview process - they are effectively: 1. limiting their new-hire pool by having too high of a hiring bar, and 2. hiring candidates that may not have the expertise that they need bc they are not interviewing for that expertise (you might be desperate for AWS / cloud skills, but testing for dynamic programming will not help you find that candidate). Big surprise - there is a hiring problem. This is a big enough problem that the tech companies are doing unusual things: 1. Amazon has been reaching out candidates that were given offers within the last year, and trying to entice them with higher offers, and 2. Apple (and Amazon will in April too, according to Blind) has been giving big pay increases (40% ish IIRC) to keep top performers from testing the market. ^^ There will be more anomalies bc the skills gap will get worse. Good news, folks - likely we will all get paid more, leetcode or not.