The time commitment is pretty minimal. It takes at most 50 hours of studying to get up to speed on leetcode style problems. There are only about 20 different ty

The time commitment is pretty minimal. It takes at most 50 hours of studying to get up to speed on leetcode style problems. There are only about 20 different types and once you learn the patterns they get a lot easier. Professional organizations in other fields require continuing education in excess of that to keep your credentials. If you can't free up 50 hours over the course of a few months that is a time management problem. Worst case you could just spend 1 hour of your work day preparing. Lots of people spend more than that on HN and other sites. The bottom line is there are more qualified applicants than there are spots available. No matter how people are selected some group is going to feel unfairly treated.