No home study grind on puzzle problems is a substitute for years of practical experience, which is what most teams actually hope for in their higher-level engineers.

The point is not that the friend didn't pick up some implicit knowledge or become a sharper engineer than they were before grinding, it's that by exploiting the screening strategy, they got placed into a job they're not truly qualified for.

Are they bright enough to fake it until they make it? Maybe, but that's not going to be the case for many of the countless placements that were made like this, and hints at why both product and software quality is in bad shape these days.

> Have you worked with them since they went through this regiment? Doing a DS&A coding problem regiment + system design will change you as an engineer. You might be surprised how good they've become.

Having done this prep, I can't tell if this comment is sarcasm. Building real systems makes you a good engineer. Maintaining systems over a long period of time makes you a good engineer. Working with other experienced engineers makes you a good engineer.

Doing this prep you do learn a few things along the way, but it's contrived. You already know what you need to learn, which is often the hard part on the job. It's works as a filter since the ability to learn concepts is important, but it's usefulness continues to trend downwards as it becomes more standardized.