It is possible to do leetcode without practicing, even before AI. That said the structure of the Big Tech process is also quite long/multi-step with many opportunities to give up during, which helps select for drive. It's hard to do this effectively with shorter processes. It is however always a good practice to 1) design very hard interviews but 2) give a lot of preparation to candidates beforehand, even for non-leetcode interviews, as it helps filter who can efficiently and diligently use provided information to increase their performance.
>It is possible to do leetcode without practicing, even before AI
Back when people did in person interviews, people were writing psuedocode on whiteboards, so knowing the right algorithm and being a strong programmer was necessary, and I can see how one might not need to practice.
However, with the move to online interviews where people are expecting running and debugging some complex solutions (so you cannot hand wave trivial but potentially time consuming helper methods), coding speed can easily become the bottleneck.
> 2) give a lot of preparation to candidates beforehand, even for non-leetcode interviews, as it helps filter who can efficiently and diligently use provided information to increase their performance.
Yes, this reminds me of the netflix interview process where they told me to read the culture packet thoroughly, then quizzed me on it! It was quite easy, but you can bet that a lof candidates don't take that seriously.
