Not Crazy, studying for a coding interview, doing leetcode problems, is in my mind much easier than the actual programming job, programming jobs can be so complicated, so hard, that studying for leetcode and solving such questions on the interview is really the easy part.
There are a lot of indicators eventually, code clarity, thinking clarity, problem-solving, handling edge cases, analysis of the runtime, choosing in between different solutions. If someone has managed to study leetcode problems, and he is good at them, when presented with a different topic he would study it and be good at it. The leetcode problems provides a common set of framework for all companies to measure by, a common baseline for all programmers, a common topic for all programmers a specific line of thought.
The crazier thing is that developers are willing to do oncall shifts without vacation day compensation.
I've only done a handful of Leetcode questions, but to me they seem to involve very little organizational skill. The ones I remember tend to be simply an implementation of a function, eg find the number of turning points in an array, that type of thing.
In my experience the real issue in coding is untangling, or avoiding, spaghetti code.
I'm not sure doing a bunch of quickfire type questions translates into being able to keep a large codebase organised.
There are a lot of indicators eventually, code clarity, thinking clarity, problem-solving, handling edge cases, analysis of the runtime, choosing in between different solutions. If someone has managed to study leetcode problems, and he is good at them, when presented with a different topic he would study it and be good at it. The leetcode problems provides a common set of framework for all companies to measure by, a common baseline for all programmers, a common topic for all programmers a specific line of thought.
The crazier thing is that developers are willing to do oncall shifts without vacation day compensation.