What's worse is that they want full-on programming, leetcode, algorithm mashing for jobs that end up being nothing more than slinging yaml or json and maybe twe

What's worse is that they want full-on programming, leetcode, algorithm mashing for jobs that end up being nothing more than slinging yaml or json and maybe tweaking a Jenkins job. That's the reality of DevOps - it's not primarily development, it's applying frameworks to infrastructure and deployment tasks. Get a senior sysadmin in operations and pay for a few courses in what you need from them.