I think you are an outlier then. What leadership traits do you discover when forcing candidates to do BFS on a binary tree or similar questions?
Why would you take someone who said he knows question A and then moved on to bomb question B when you have 30 candidates who solves question A? Ok no one does perfect but bombing a question seriously hinders your prospects. If you see a question you know or semi know you gotta be very silly to say it. People don't drill Leetcode to say oh sorry I saw this one already. Nope. In fact even remembering hundreds of questions and being able to solve
them under stress is hard enough.
Many FAANG candidates are just brilliant and don't really need much preparation to get accepted. But others are normal smart but spent months preparing by going through algorithm questions. It's quite certain they come up with 1-2 question they have seen before and this enables them to pass. If it wasn't the case no one would subscribe to Leetcode....
My org is generally anti-leetcode so I can’t speak for your experiences - the only data structure/algorithm questions you may encounter in an interview with my org is likely practical questions (i.e. problems we have had to solve on the job).
I’m usually not even asking a coding question in my session - I set up a practical/common problem beforehand and we explore the scenario together. I can assure you that many candidates don’t pass my session necessarily, even if they have proven in other sessions to be brilliant coders - I’m not looking for technical brilliance in most of the interviews I give, and neither are the hiring managers I work with. To me, focusing on the coding is most important on the technical screen, not the full panel - once you reach the full panel, your goal is to demonstrate technical leadership, which includes expertise in knowledge, coding competency, focus on UX, and some other areas for more senior roles (conflict management, responsibility, navigating different stakeholders for product/project decisions, etc.).
If all your focus is in is just the coding questions, you’ve likely already set yourself up for failure.
