I'm a Senior Engineer at a large tech company with over 20 years of experience. For the last 5 years, my role has primarily revolved around devops, tech leadership (small teams), taking care of system architecture , feature design, security stuff, reviews etc, with much of the hands-on coding (mostly maintenance stuff) delegated to junior engineers. What's striking is that in my entire tenure here, I haven't encountered a single task that required implementing anything close to the Data Structures and Algorithms (DS/Algo) problems you'd find on LeetCode.
Now, with layoff rumors circulating in our organization, I'm actively exploring new opportunities. The challenge? Despite my extensive experience, it seems almost every company, even for senior roles, still kicks off the interview process with a DS/Algo screen.
This puts me at a crossroads. Should I dedicate valuable time to reskilling in DS/Algo, essentially studying just to pass an interview hurdle? Or is there a viable path to convince hiring managers to look past these skills and focus solely on my strengths in system design, architecture, and practical engineering leadership?
Honestly, it feels a bit absurd to spend time on "basic" DS/Algo questions after all these years, especially when current AI tools can make much of that work redundant.
Any insights or advice would be greatly appreciated!
PS: If it helps, I'm based in India, not US !