Ten years of experience, still failing phone screens
Today&#x27;s interview process seems eminently gameable by grinding LeetCode and watching YouTube videos on system design.  In the last 4 months of job searching I&#x27;ve gone from barely being able to get past the question (reading under time pressure stresses me out), to convincingly passing about half of my recent phone screens.  All I&#x27;ve done is one LeetCode per day and interviewed a couple of times per week.  I&#x27;m not fundamentally any better of a software engineer than 4 months ago.  The current system is great for zero-knowledge people with the time and mettle to study, and awful for accomplished but time-poor senior engineers.<p>And, why all companies have decided upon almost the exact same methodology, I can&#x27;t understand that either.  It seems to be the same double edged sword as the Common Application for college: you get more applicants because the incremental effort required to apply to college n+1 is low, but it drives down college admit rates as well as matriculation rates: the signal to noise ratio probably goes way down.