Is this true though? I mean Google famously didn’t give a shit about hiring Max Howell (creator of homebrew) because of hazing-style pointless whiteboard trivia [0].
I’d guess the number of circles where a thoughtful side project that digs into deep computer science fundamentals as well as difficult implementation specifics would even get you the slightest attention for an interview is close enough to zero as to render it meaningless.
If you think about a lot of possible different self-study options, ranging from cramming and shallow memorization of leetcode garbage or Cracking the Coding Interview, all the way to patiently applying craftsmanship and self-learning to a side project that exercises and demonstrates core fundamentals in a pragmatic way, the shallow memorization garbage will earn you money, while the side project will earn you an email with a hyperlink to HackerRank.
It is one of the worst aspects of our industry, and a major reason why I would advise younger people to treat the idea that there are direct, stable, good-paying jobs with job security in the tech industry with a lot of skepticism. It’s an industry constantly trying to invent new ways to shift the demographics more and more into the least experienced and least expensive quantiles of candidates, and to arrange businesses where actual software labor productivity doesn’t have a strong tie to the company’s bottom line, except maybe for a tiny population of experts.
[0]: < https://www.quora.com/Whats-the-logic-behind-Google-rejectin... >