I did maybe 5-10 hours of preparation for my current job's interview and most of my colleagues didn't grind either. I'm skeptical of this idea that the only people who work at FAANG are Leetcode machines that have sacrificed their lives to grind questions.
then maybe you are an outlier and were asked the exact questions you prepared for. most people here mentioned 2-3 months of grinding and that is what i also experienced firsthand.
the interview process does not optimize for great people with relevant experience but for those who repeatedly grind leetcode problems irrelevant to the job.
i interviewed a while ago at a FAANG where they had a long standing problem related to their OS. i knew the solution because i recently brought a product to market built on top of a similar OS and had to address the same problem.
but it was more important to them i passed their coding test within a few minutes, and that i choose the optimum solution, which can only be found if you can spend an hour thinking about it. i bombed the interview due to not being used to coding interviews and having to talk while i think, and having to do all this in a few minutes.
they are probably still wondering how to fix their problem.
