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Comment by PragmaticPulp | Hacker News Reader

> there are multiple blog posts from senior engineers who took 1-2 months off to grind LC just to get into Google/Meta etc.

Don’t read too much into blog posts. This is engagement farming to capture search traffic and trending topics related to LeetCode.

Taking months off to grind LeetCode all day isn’t common and doesn’t even make sense. LeetCode can be done on a lunch break. Even one problem per day in the evenings is more than enough for a senior to prep for an interview.

Having done LeetCode, I’m not even sure how a senior could justify spending 2 months doing all of the problems full-time.

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I think people like to exaggerate the difficulty of these interviews to excuse themselves for not having one of these jobs.

The lifestyle/compensation gap between top tier tech and everything else is enormous and it's a tough pill to swallow that the only thing keeping you out is some light studying every day for a few weeks/months.

> Don’t read too much into blog posts. This is engagement farming to capture search traffic and trending topics related to LeetCode.

If that's true, then it should be fairly simple to defect from this prisoner's dilemma- just publish articles saying, "I didn't have to take months off to grind LC, I completed it through light prep and you can too!" In the realm of blog self-help, simple advice, framed with this sort of counter-common wisdom contrarianism, can be as popular as the ones that follow trends. Often even more popular.

But you don't really see articles like that. You do see some pro-LC articles from interviewers' points of view, but none saying, "It's actually easy! Here's three simple tips," despite the potential for search traffic capture.

> Don’t read too much into blog posts.

"Trust me, not other people" says random person on the internet, providing no evidence to support their claim.

> Having done LeetCode, I’m not even sure how a senior could justify spending 2 months doing all of the problems full-time.

So not only are they lying, but if they aren't lying they are incompetent. Got it.

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