This probably won’t be helpful. But I suspect that if you have spent 15 years in software development without having to do the leetCode/DS&A monkey dance, you

This probably won’t be helpful. But I suspect that if you have spent 15 years in software development without having to do the leetCode/DS&A monkey dance, you were probably doing enterprise/corporate dev. I spent 25 years doing enterprise/corp dev at unknown companies before I got my first BigTech job and it wasn’t as a “software engineer” it was in the Professional Services department as a cloud consultant (yes it’s a full time role) specializing in “application modernization” - meaning the same type of enterprise dev work using cloud technologies along with a shit ton of yaml, HCL, PowerPoint slides, diagrams, etc. It requires a combination of people skills, project management skills, writing, presenting and technical. Three of the Big 5 tech companies have similar divisions. I was personally looking at both AWS and Microsoft because while my short at the time “cloud” background was AWS. My development background was in Microsoft technologies. There are a lot of “older” former pure “software engineers” who pivoted toward consulting and Solution Architects. My interview was all behavioral except the initial screening was AWS techno trivia. In an alternate universe where I was rejected from the big three, I might have been greedy enough to “grind leetCode”. It definitely would have been for the money. I never had any desire to be software engineer at a large company. At least now my projects are ones where I can take ownership of the entire project or at least my part from pre-sales to conclusion.