It's probably a big corpo thing.

Having basic algorithm skills is pretty useful in general, but going down the "leetcode grind" doesn't strike me as being worth the effort for the vast majority of software engineering jobs.

If serious, it was and still is a common screening tool for big tech and many other shops around the world.

I've never been asked to "grind" leetcode, I've never been asked a leetcode style question at any interview I've had (and I'm in my mid 40s). I've never had any feeling of needing to do leetcode, and as far as I know neither have my friends.

The reason I asked if it was mainly a US thing was because I assume (maybe wrongly) that the majority of HN users are in the US, and this leetcode thing pops up a lot.

> I've never been asked a leetcode style question at any interview I've had (and I'm in my mid 40s).

For this anecdote to be relevant, you'd need to have datapoints from "big tech" qualifying jobs.

Glossing over this qualifier pattern matches with snarky comments.