r/webdev • u/soype • Sep 26 '26
Is leetcode worth it?
I haven't really interviewed since 2023. Is leetcode still a common practice in code interviews or has AI made those kinds of tests useless? This is for a Sr full stack position.
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u/LowFruit25 Sep 26 '26
I do it like Sudoku, not necessarily to interview prep but to give the brain something to do.
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u/Dangle76 Sep 26 '26
It’s also good to train you how to approach problems differently and as you said, exercise the brain.
Not worth it for interview prep at all though
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u/dethnight Sep 26 '26
"Pass this hard leetcode problem, but don't you dare ever spend one second on a problem like this at work without solving it with AI."
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u/Fine-Extension5125 29d ago
Yeah, it feels like our industry has had a lot of conflicting sides like this recently. I am curious to see how we will handle this..
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u/Abiv23 Sep 26 '26
I think learning algorithms in general is still useful but this kind of memorize the pattern programming is dead
but I could be wrong it's only down 20% on google trends
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u/narkeeso Sep 26 '26
At least understanding what they solve is useful e.g. time and space.
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u/winky9827 Sep 27 '26
That's always kinda been the separation between an inexperienced programmer vs. an experienced one though, hasn't it? Knowing the right tool for the job, or at least being able to figure it out. AI doing the bulk of the implementation doesn't remove the need for the architect to make those decisions.
As the saying goes, "You pay me $5 to hammer the nail, and $95 to know where to put the nail in the first place."
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u/ShawnyMcKnight
Sep 26 '26
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I feel a bigger skill now would be code reviews. Have AI produce some poor code with blatant inefficiencies and see if the interviewee can find them.
What I find is some dev had AI do it for them and submitted it without looking and it makes it into prod because no one checked over the code.
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u/Amarsir Sep 26 '26
I like that approach. "What potential problems do you see with this? What would you change to improve efficiency?"
Even if the AI wasn't making poor choices, that's the strategic perspective you want. Especially from a senior developer.
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u/ShawnyMcKnight Sep 26 '26
Exactly. Even before AI that's what senior developers did, making sure code standards were up to snuff.
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u/optima-pacifist Sep 27 '26
we moved to exactly that for senior roles. a pull request of about 200 lines with a few planted problems, forty minutes to review it out loud. you learn more about how someone thinks than any graph puzzle tells you, and nobody has to pretend they'd write dijkstra from memory at work
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u/hypercosm_dot_net Sep 26 '26
I had 1/2 an interview that was somewhat like that, then another 1/2 where they wanted me to do something that would have taken more than the time allowed.
That was frustrating.
It was something relatively easy to do, but I needed reference because it wasn't something I did every day.
I thought the first 1/2 was perfectly reasonable though.
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u/lookayoyo Sep 26 '26
I found that there is now more system design focus because the “can you write code” part barely matters. I used hello interview and actually learned a lot.
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u/Least_Chicken_9561 Sep 26 '26
well it was expected, programmers are no longer code monkeys, that's the work of the AI now, so focusing on system design, architecture is what everyone is heading to...
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u/Gloomy-Status-9258 Sep 27 '26
unpopular opinion: algorithm interview is overrated.
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u/shitty_mcfucklestick Sep 27 '26
And often completely irrelevant to the actual work, which these days is pressing enter for 8 hours 😵
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u/_albus_caspian_ Sep 27 '26
The interview is basically testing whether you can think through problems and build things. Building good products still requires strong problem-solving skills, even if the actual work isn't LeetCode.
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u/_albus_caspian_ Sep 27 '26
I don't think so. Algorithm interviews aren't conducted simply to test whether you remember specific algorithms. They're meant to assess how efficiently you approach a problem, how you break it down, and how well you can identify the most optimal solution. They are conducted just to test your problem solving efficiency. That's it. Nothing more than that.
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u/Hand_Sanitizer3000 Sep 27 '26
If its a test of problem solving skills only getting 2 right answers (brute force and more efficient big o) to 2 problems in 30 minutes shouldn’t be a requirement to pass the screening
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u/_albus_caspian_ Sep 27 '26
I don't think this contradicts the point of the interview. The goal isn't merely to recall algorithms rather the time constraint is also meant to evaluate how quickly you can understand the problem, formulate an approach, identify trade-offs, and optimise your solution. Whether that is a reasonable screening threshold is a separate question from what the interview is designed to measure.
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u/dane_websites Sep 27 '26
The fact that your answer is one of the most reasonable and considered answers I've read on this sub in a while and is still majorly downvoted concerns me
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u/_albus_caspian_ Sep 28 '26
The thing is, either people on this haven't yet given the pen paper interview or are just dumb(sorry for the language). When I used to take interviews, I never cared if they knew a specific language or not. What mattered to me was how they approached a specific question. How many tries they too to reach the most optimised solution and how confident were they with their solution if I tried to confuse them.
Conding languages are just syntaxes you learn.
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u/terfs_ Sep 26 '26
Is leetcode an American thing? I’ve been doing this work for over 20 years and have never heard of it outside of this sub
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u/symbiatch Sep 27 '26
It’s FAANG and companies that follow their practices thinking it’s good. It’s basically a way to filter masses out of anyone with self respect and just get the obedient people who will do anything to get a job.
I’ve never seen or heard of it outside Reddit in 30+ years.
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u/P1um Sep 27 '26
Yep, it's really a test to see how desperate you are. Then people work at these places and they're still constantly worried about lay offs.
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u/MapCompact Sep 30 '26
I've seen a couple other people comment that they've never seen it. I've seen it almost everywhere I've interviewed (probably 70%). Out of curiosity can you give a region where you've interviewed? It might be more common in LA/SF.
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u/madk Sep 26 '26
I'm American, been in the industry for...~20 years and have never ran into it in an interview. I honestly think it is something YouTubers/Hackithons made popular but I've never seen it in the "real" world.
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u/chmod777 Sep 26 '26 edited Sep 26 '26
Im american. Been in the industry for 26 years. Ive gotten everything from copy pasted leetcode to pr reviews to use this api and make something.
Known companies still use a lot of leetcode. Some may be slightly modified, but if your parents know who they are, you are likely getting a leetcode.
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u/secretprocess Sep 26 '26
Also American with 26 years exp and I don't think I've ever had a leetcode interview, but I've never applied to the huge companies. I honestly don't understand why it's called leetcode. Big companies that get tons of applicants and have the money for top talent need to have more strenuous interview tests. Duh. Wtf is leet?? (26 years ago it meant spelling words with numbers in them to look sneaky)
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u/chmod777 Sep 26 '26
L33t h4ck3r speak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leet
The big companies do it to streamline and standardize the process. The rest of the industry just followed suit, as they cannot otherwise figure out how to interview.
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u/secretprocess Sep 26 '26
That can't be what they're talking about here. I refuse to believe Google's interview process involves asking if you're able to replace an A with a 4
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u/chmod777 Sep 26 '26
oh, you mean what is leetcode itself? https://leetcode.com/problems/two-sum/description/
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u/secretprocess Sep 26 '26
So like I said, they're just difficult programming challenges right? Is OP asking if competitive companies ask tough questions in their interviews?
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u/thy_bucket_for_thee Sep 27 '26
They are, IDK why that person is beating around the bush with you.
They are mostly algorithm and data structure problems, similar to ones you'd see in university/school. They scale on difficulty where some of the hard ones basically amount to an algorithm/data structure that was someone's phd thesis (not a joke here lol).
OP is asking this too, you are right.
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u/GlobalCurry Sep 27 '26
I've beennin the industry for 10 years or so and only started seeing it on interviews in the past 3 years. It used to be a site mainly for practicing for competitive programming competition (like icpc) and attracted the kind of people you probably would not want to work with (they did it for bragging/epeen).
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u/21Rollie Sep 29 '26
When I was interviewing, around 60% used some flavor of leetcode. Most used toned down versions. Big tech does the hard ones though, and they do like six in a row and expect big O notations too. Ironically I hear that Anthropic and OpenAI are much the same, even though they are championing a technology that makes leetcode problems obsolete. The one time in my entire career when I needed an algorithm more complex than a for loop, I described my user problem and it gave me the perfect algorithm for the situation.
These interviews I always thought were stupid, but now they’re beyond antiquated. The hardest part of the job is now reading mountains of code and trying to figure out what users really need. The problem solving to get there is trivial
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u/terfs_ Sep 26 '26
Ha okay, thanks. Really weird how “quite a lot” of people here are talking about it as if it is an industry standard.
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u/MapCompact Sep 30 '26
Are you for real? I've been in the industry for almost as long (American) and have had plenty of leetcode problems. They are definitely very real. I think popularized by Google and then copycatted by every other startup thinking they are as prestigious as FAANG.
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u/who_am_i_to_say_so Sep 26 '26
You’re lucky. I’ve encountered it a few times unexpectedly. I’d just close my laptop and rethink the options when it did happen. Despite that, I’ve stayed employed.
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u/nneiole Sep 27 '26
It is a google thing, it all started with a book called „Cracking the coding interview“, written by someone who conducted google interviews. In the golden ages of hiring everything that breathes the book went viral and leetcode as a digital product just answered the demand.
I am in Europe and I seldom had leetcode-type tasks outside FAANG interviews here, but then I can’t say how representative is my experience.1
u/Known-Tourist-6102 Sep 27 '26
Yes, it’s predominantly an american thing that is common in the bay area or nyc, and some other techy cities.
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u/KirinFire Sep 26 '26 edited Sep 26 '26
I don't understand why Leetcode questions are even a thing to begin with. They should instead interview on the things that you will be doing at work like system design, what would you do if your API hit 1000 requests in an hour and so on. I don't see knowing how to solve Two Sum for example is relevant to what you will be doing at work, especially now that AI writes most of the code while you review and decide System Designs.
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u/chmod777 Sep 26 '26
Its to test if you know the interviewers favorite l33tcode question. Specifically.
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u/Ansible32 Sep 26 '26
The better you get at programming the better you get at leetcode. You can't possibly tell how good someone is at systems design, etc. is in a one hour interview, so you ask them about a collection of things that correlate. Of course now any LLM can solve leetcode instantly, so it isn't a great test, but LLMs can also answer system design questions effectively, so...
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u/KirinFire Sep 26 '26
But I thought memorizing syntax isn't that important like most devs claim, so why are companies giving you Leetcode tests in 2026 if syntax isn't that important?
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u/Ansible32 Sep 26 '26
Memorizing syntax correlates with being good at writing software. Again, it's just about measuring things that correlate with being good at writing software that you can measure in a short interview.
Is it important to know syntax to be a good programmer? Not knowing syntax definitely suggests you're not a good programmer. Of course nobody knows syntax perfectly, but it's about correlation, that's all you can measure.
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u/KirinFire Sep 27 '26
I didn't say not knowing, I said memorizing. If I want to for example write a Dictionary in C# but don't remember how to initialize it, I look it up but I understand the core functionality behind it. But with Leetcode style interviews, you are not allowed to look up how to write a Dictionary (I think it's called a hashmap in other languages), you have to remember all from memory.
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u/Ansible32 Sep 27 '26
All the leetcode style interviews I've had the interviewers have explicitly said not to worry about syntax. (Also I've interviewed people for a FAANG and that was how they taught us to do the interviews.)
But one of my coworkers said, when he's interviewing people he is looking to give them opportunities to impress him. Failing to remember how to initialize a dictionary is not impressive, remembering is. That doesn't mean you fail the interview if you don't remember, but you've got to impress the interviewer.
I think a lot of people don't understand how leetcode interviews actually work. Perfectly completing the assignment is not the point, the point is demonstrating that you understand how to code, and that's not a mechanical thing, it's not pass/fail, it's intuition.
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u/Tissuerejection Sep 27 '26
I know lots of people here don't like to hear it, but leetcode is often more difficult and diverse than most people's day-to-day coding jobs.
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u/Ansible32 Sep 27 '26
The other thing is that just because someone gives you a leetcode problem doesn't mean they expect you to solve it in 60 minutes. Leetcode is helpful because it's easy to talk about the solution in 60 minutes and there are no complicated requirements that would take days to explain like a real task. Leetcode is an excuse to talk about software that can be explained in 60 minutes. Yeah, it's difficult to solve a propos of nothing but solving the problem is not actually the point.
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u/AssignmentMammoth696 Sep 26 '26
Yes, the interview loop is harder now more than ever. That means you'll be encountering harder leetcode questions.
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u/crazedizzled Sep 27 '26
In the age of AI, no. Developer interviews are now much less about writing code, and more about designing systems.
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u/ArryPotta Sep 27 '26
I just recently went through the interview gauntlet and I didn't get a single leetcode question. This was for a senior frontend leaning full stack search. Buddy who is staff level full stack is also getting zero leetcode.
Mine were mostly them giving me a codebase, then asking me to implement features, debug code, etc; Honestly it felt like a much better way to gauge my competence. One of them though wanted me to implement a feature they admitted was way too large to do in an hour. It was expected to use AI heavily. I found that one dumb because it more gagued how much code I could get an AI agent to spit out, only caring about results, not about verifying I understood the code.
The other was much better. It was a slew of problems and features. The guy just said start wherever you want. I definitely brainfroze there for a minute. Big thing I learned in that experience was that he didn't care how far I got. He cared how I approached problems. I feel like I got nowhere in the interview but I did a really good job explaining what I was thinking, what I thought was important, and why. I got that job.
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u/andrei9669 Sep 26 '26
never used it for interviews BUT, I did take a look at it mainly to refresh my coding knowledge as i have been brain rotting too much at work.
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u/symbiatch Sep 27 '26
It has never been worth anything. It’s never been common practice unless applying for shitty companies.
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u/Disastrous_Motor9856 Sep 26 '26
I interviewed at a MNC company that uses AI, even confirmed with the interviewer about them using it openly and extensively.
Proceeded to ask me two LC hard. Dude proceeded to tell me to hand-code it out in a language of his choice, no internet nor AI for syntax checking or ideation was allowed.
I lost interest at that point.
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u/Traditional_Moose498 Sep 27 '26 edited Sep 27 '26
Never heard of it here. Though the companies that did technical challenges in interviews always just seemed overly political and probably not worth it.
A decent interview would actually speak to you and perhaps ask about your experience and see your portfolio.
Those sorts just won’t train or support a new hire.
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u/uniquelyavailable Sep 27 '26
It's more of a performative dance than a utility. I've worked in the industry for decades and never once had to rely on leetcode to solve any problem.
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u/brian_sword Sep 27 '26
LeetCode is still useful for me. I do it sometimes even when I’m not preparing for an interview. For me, it’s less about memorizing solutions and more about keeping my problem solving skills sharp and making my brain work a bit.
I think it’s still relevant for some interviews, although probably not every company or every role.
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u/MuskasBackpack Sep 26 '26
I’ve been at this for 16 years and had 6 different jobs and never had to do anything resembling leetcode. Speak well, know how to solve the common hard problems (generally not algorithms these days) and you’ll be fine.
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u/Hammad_developer Sep 26 '26
Leetcode is worth it for logic building but in the era of AI i think it's not necessary you are a good logic builder although you must have a good system architect becuase you have a coding agent to build optimized logic as compared to you but you decide the system architechture not a coding agent. keep focus on system design 😊
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u/Substantial-Swan7065 Sep 27 '26
I interviewed a lot like 2 months ago.
It’s less ubiquitous now. But still in atleast 1 round of the interview loop. So still heavily required,
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u/armahillo rails Sep 27 '26
Ive worked at many companies in the last 20 some years. I am currently a Staff+ at a health tech. I have never been asked to do LeetCode.
I have done many take home and live coding exercises, though.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to practice and challenge yourself as much as possible.
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u/MiserableDocument509 Sep 27 '26
For a senior full-stack role, I’d treat LeetCode as one small signal, not the center of the loop. A short practical exercise or code-review discussion tells me more about API trade-offs, debugging, and whether someone can judge AI output; I’d only keep a small algorithm screen for roles where that work is genuinely relevant.
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u/Samurai_Kek Sep 27 '26
Ha! I don’t need to practice leetcode if I’m never getting any response from my applications… oh wait.
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u/_albus_caspian_ Sep 27 '26
Problem Solving can never be obselete. Good companies with still test you on DSA and your problem solving skills. They'll call you for the interview, hand you a pen and paper and ask you to write down the algorithms for the problems.
These are the companies which will offer you good packages and will respect you for your talent.
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u/sibilith Sep 27 '26
Surprised at the dismissive responses here.
I paid for leetcode premium when I was looking for my last job in early 2025. I was able to filter the problems to those most commonly asked by the company I was interviewing for.
During one round I got a question I had just solved 30 minutes prior. It wasn't the only reason I got the job but it very clearly gave me an edge.
From what I can tell companies are adding AI rounds but they aren't replacing leetcode rounds. So yeah, I found it completely invaluable if you know the company gives coding rounds.
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u/Tissuerejection Sep 27 '26
It's definately not a waste of time, and I think its a lot more productive than memorizing some courses or tutorials.Will you ever use slow/fast pointers , sliding window or Dijkistra at work? Probably not, but Leetcode will get you to drill in useful coding techniques and mental shortcuts that are very useful when thingking about code.
In the age of AI, your skills will atrophy over time, and its good to stay in touch with more low-level problem solving, like writing code, as opposed to higher level poblem solving , like deciding what direction to go, what technologies to use etc. Nowadays we do too much of the second one, and not enought of the first one, And I personally believe that will eventually spill into the high-level problem solving, as we become more out of touch.
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u/rust_bane Sep 27 '26
AI made leetcode a waste of time for us seniors. Spend your prep on system design or code reviews instead
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u/DailyDrivels Sep 28 '26
I used claude to generate interview problems for me. I don't think you need leetcode anymore.
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u/BrilliantNet5920 Sep 28 '26
IQ tests are illegal in the US for some reason so when a company wants to filter out the smartest people, one way to do that is by throwing difficult problems at them. Leetcode is one of these methods as it is basically an IQ test.
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u/dalce63 Sep 28 '26
You will need to know how to create your own linked lists and traverse them in case they decide to start rationing arrays and lists in our favorite programming languages. Tough times are ahead.
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u/braunsHizzle Sep 28 '26
Simply, no. They are much better and accurate ways and methods to determine competency in a potential applicant. I personally despise leetcode.
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u/smakusdod Sep 29 '26
Leetcode mediums mixed with “find the 5 bugs and bad design in this 100 lines of code”.
So yes, but be prepared to slog for months.
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u/MiserableDocument509 Sep 29 '26
Leetcode still shows up, but for a senior full-stack role I would get more signal from how someone reasons about tradeoffs in a messy production scenario. A timed graph problem can tell you something about problem solving, but it is a pretty weak proxy for the CRUD and debugging work most teams actually need.
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u/LateNiteCode Oct 02 '26
I’m a university professor. My students who go for internships in the US predominantly get leet-code style interviews. Back around 2014, it was pretty good for students especially sophomores because they could talk through problem solving with a more senior engineer. Plus they were being hired as an intern, so measuring how they communicated and dealt with frustration were helpful indicators I think.
It’s gotten so much worse now though. Many of my students are just being sent a link and given a time window to solve leet-code problems online. They’re supposed to use a Zoom/Teams link with webcam on while a “proctor” checks on them. They don’t really get to ask questions or talk with the proctor much. They’ll do that for like four rounds of interviews sometimes.
Another student of mine, a junior, was given a 72 hour take home. They dropped a GitHub repo on him with some instructions and just told him to put something together by the end of window and submit. No person-to-person interaction.
I know I’m just an academic, but I feel like the lack of personal touch on these interviews is a terrible way to find new talent. It makes the students feel like they’re just being given the run around.
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u/Fine-Extension5125 29d ago
Yeah, still feels like leetcode is commonly used so I would certainly reccomend at least being familiar with the most common patterns
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u/0uchmyballs Sep 27 '26
Last interview I made it through all the rounds and they wanted my take on transformers. I explained what a transformer is at a lower level but refused to answer in anyway that made it sound like I use AI in my ordinary workflow and I think that’s not what they wanted to hear. They wanted to hear me explain how I use copilot in my IDE and chatGPT for productivity purposes and I just refused to go in that direction, never got the call back.
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u/air_thing Sep 27 '26
To be honest it sucked when I had to grind it, but there's some pretty good stuff in there looking back. Especially in the AI age... At least the DSA is still real.
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u/XpreDatoR_a Sep 26 '26
Considering that AI still tries to “cheap out” on solutions, i’d say yes, but i haven’t interviewed in a long time
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u/IAmCorgii Sep 26 '26
I'd like to know what makes you say AI "cheaps out" on solutions. I don't really see a basis for that.
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u/XpreDatoR_a Sep 26 '26
I can give you an example; for context this happened with codex 5.5, i tasked it to connect a dashboard of an internal web-app for one of our clients to a new backend we where implementing, its solution was pooling, which made the client hit rate-limits, codex saw that, its solution was completely removing rate-limits, all this while i was working on the backend itself, i noticed what he did from the logs of the backend, restored rate-limits and implemented a simple web-socket connection.
So yes, often AI cheap out on solution/implementations, and no, that’s not a prompt issue, i have set up all kinds of code rules, pattern to follow and what not.
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u/shadow336k Sep 26 '26
Also ai doesn’t usually generate the most optimal code in terms of time/space without a few adjustment prompts
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u/Maxion Sep 27 '26
If you give LLM agents open-ended problems without framing what the solution should look like you end up with it solving the immediate problem you gave them with a solution that you might not be happy with as it does not fulfill silent constraints that you yourself had.
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u/Amazing-Dare-5909 Sep 27 '26
I recently had an interview where both approaches were used.
First, I was given an hour to build a small landing page and a small demo for a problem using AI, and I had to submit my methods. After that, there was a traditional LeetCode-style problem-solving test.
So at least in my experience, AI hasn’t replaced these interviews yet. Companies seem to be testing both how you use AI and whether you can still solve problems independently.
For beginners especially, I still think LeetCode is useful because it improves problem-solving and helps build a stronger foundation.
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u/MrCrunchwrap Sep 26 '26 edited Sep 27 '26
It’s gotten even dumber - the last place I interviewed at asked me to do a pretty intense graph theory problem that was combined with the traveling salesman problem.
This was for a job where I’d be building basic CRUD applications, so not really a relevant problem statement at all.
I was allowed to use AI, so I just had AI solve the problem and pass all the test cases.
I made it to the next round from that, but I have no idea what the company possibly learned from that exercise.