Okay so I grew up in the Philippines and I always thought it was super weird how obsessed Silicon Valley was with coding puzzles.

Like here, when companies wanted to hire devs, they'd just look at your GitHub and ask about stuff you actually built. Maybe give you a real problem to solve. The whole "memorize algorithms for interviews" thing seemed so dumb to me. Why test someone on stuff they'll literally never use at work?

Turns out we were right all along.

GitLab said bye to LeetCode. Buffer did too. Zapier jumped ship. And last week Snapchat was like "we're done with coding puzzles forever."

Finally! The tech world is catching up to what we've known forever - there's gotta be a better way to hire people.

Stealth AI Assistants Are Now a Thing

Here's what's wild - there are now AI tools that can help you during coding interviews and the interviewer literally can't see them, even when you're sharing your screen.

These stealth assistants run in the background, analyze the problem in real time, and give you hints without leaving any trace. They're completely invisible to screen sharing software.

People are using these tools to land jobs at major tech companies, and the interviewers have no clue it's happening.

I mean come on. If an AI can easily beat your whole hiring process, maybe your hiring process sucked from the start?

Let's Just Say It - LeetCode is Useless

Can we all just admit what we're thinking? LeetCode has literally nothing to do with being good at coding.

It's like if the NBA picked players based on how well they could juggle basketballs. Sure, juggling takes practice, but does it tell you if someone can actually play basketball? Nope.

That's LeetCode. You can memorize every pattern and crush every problem, but still have zero clue how to build an actual app or figure out why your code is breaking.

Companies are finally realizing they've been hiring jugglers to play basketball.

What Companies Are Actually Doing Now

The smart companies (the ones who can't afford to hire badly) are trying totally different stuff:

Making Interviews Actually Make Sense

Instead of random puzzles, they're like "hey we need this feature built, can you build it?"

I heard about this startup that treats interviews like mini projects. They literally pay you for 5 days of work and if it's good, you're hired. No weird brain teasers, no whiteboard stress, just real work.

They Want You to Use AI (I Know, Right?)

This blew my mind. Some companies now tell you to USE AI tools during interviews. Their thinking? "This is how you'll work here anyway, so let's see how good you are with AI."

Makes total sense. Why would they want someone who's worse at their job than they could be?

It's All System Design Now

The interviews that actually matter are more like conversations. "How would you build Instagram?" "What if a million people hit your app at once?" "Walk me through building this from scratch."

These are problems AI can't just solve for you. You actually need to know how stuff works.

Real Talk Time

Look, I get it. Change is scary, especially if you spent months grinding LeetCode. But honestly? This change is amazing for us.

We're going from a world where you had to memorize algorithms to a world where you solve real problems. From pretending AI doesn't exist to using AI to be better at your job.

Companies don't want puzzle-solvers anymore. They want builders. People who can take messy real problems and turn them into apps that actual people use.

This shift is already happening. The question is - are you gonna adapt or get left behind?

So what do you think? Ready to ditch the LeetCode grind and start building real stuff? Because honestly, I can't wait to see what we all make when we stop wasting time on puzzles and start solving actual problems.