The biggest issue that I have with LC interviews, is that they don’t reflect the real world. They come from a perfect world, where every problem is solved in 50

The biggest issue that I have with LC interviews, is that they don’t reflect the real world. They come from a perfect world, where every problem is solved in 50 lines or less, and will not need to be maintained. I have known many folks that constantly practice these, and are extremely good at them. Many practice sites, optimize for target companies, advising on how to solve in a manner each is looking for. They also frequently optimize for recent school graduates, as these types of problems are almost exactly how software development is taught. In my case, I write code for shipping software, every single day (including weekends. Today, I am working on a backend admin tool for an app that has been shipping since the beginning of this year), and have been, for many, many years. In fact, my entire adult life, has been shipping software and hardware products. It hasn’t always been good, and it hasn’t always been successful, but it has always shipped. Just about every single day, I am faced with at least one problem, that, if I don’t solve it, will mean that I can’t ship whatever I’m working on. Often, the solution requires that I learn something new, or unlearn something that I just know is The Right Way to Do It. So I’m usually humbled, every single day. This also takes time; sometimes, quite a lot of time. I don’t really have the bandwidth to practice code that is irrelevant to solving my daily existential programming crises. Many times, learning the new techniques required to solve the issue, involves LC-style exercises, but focused on addressing a very real-world problem, so I guess I do practice. But I am aware that today’s software industry isn’t really interested in folks like me. They want armies of uniform short-timers that will make relatively small contributions to massive codebases that will outlive them. I’m not particularly interested in that kind of work. I really enjoy what I do. I enjoy it so much, that I do it for free, as no one is interested in paying folks to do it.