To put this in context though, if you’re already getting recruiter interest and scheduling onsites it’s better to leetcode. If you aren’t getting resume callbacks then build stuff.

It’s been discussed before but the sad reality is that passing an interview loop at the big 5 and building stuff are not really correlated.

This is very true, the need for cleverness of algorithms tends to be... sadly low compared to discipline needs to execute on a schedule. Build stuff, and then get used to the grind to finish and ship something.