It depends- maybe if people devoted enough time to cramming algorithmic problems (more than they did in their CS classes, even) could they have memorized enough solutions and seen the patterns enough to be able to master this type of technical interview? One wonders, can that rote memorization + pattern machine process be trained into anyone- meaning that this is not a measure of intelligence but of brute force, like memorizing Rubik's Cube solutions?

And then the practical concern arises- does that actually make anyone a better programmer, and benefit employers?

It's really not. Knowing how to solve those leetcode questions has not improved my professional life one bit. I am not a better programmer.. In fact it probably made me worse. At my work I pretty much never deal with the kind of coding that leetcode requires. I'm more interested in writing larger scale software rather than throw away toy problems which completely ignore code quality or maintainability.

In fact, I'm not even good at solving leetcode problems that well so I wasn't able to get a job at the big N companies...although it did help with passing the interview at one of the smaller companies.