Hiring is broken

We're still asking senior engineers to reverse linked lists on a whiteboard. In 2026. When AI writes that code in 3 seconds.

The top-performing engineer I worked with at Avoca would have failed most coding interviews. She'd blank on algorithm questions under time pressure. But give her an ambiguous product problem and she'd decompose it, identify the tradeoffs, and ship a solution that handled every edge case. That's the skill that matters.

LeetCode tests pattern matching and memorization. The job requires problem decomposition, system thinking, and the ability to collaborate with AI tools effectively. The correlation between "passes coding interview" and "ships great products" is getting weaker every year.

Companies know this. They keep using LeetCode anyway because it's measurable and defensible. "We use a standardized coding assessment" sounds better in a hiring committee than "we had a conversation and it felt right."

That's not hiring. That's theater.