I don't have time to memorize leetcode, and I'm just not good at it. Even considering it can just take time for everyone, I'm somehow unexpectedly bad despite my experience. I'm actually pretty good at actual software engineering work though (8 years). I'm also pretty good at OS level stuff across the board. I didn't know there non-leetcode paths without completely changing careers and abandoning my dev history.

I was just about to schedule my 1st-set whiteboard style interview with the recruiter, which always ends in a flaming disaster, but maybe I should consider their other routes.

I'm a full stack (backend main) software engineer but I'm usually exceptional at fixing server stuff and fully understanding logs to debug problems or find potential exploits through logs or when reading through code reviews. Everyone else I've ever worked with struggles at these things. I can just naturally comprehend other's code / architecture even across technologies.

If there's a career path I can show this in interviews instead of fumbling on even easy LeetCode problems or the other silly things I randomly get stuck on only in interviews, maybe I could actually shine for once.