I think the crazy thing is people think redis is the only thing that catches in memory.
You could throw a bunch of your production data in SSAS tabular and there you go you have an in memory cache. I've actually deployed that as a solution and the speed is crazy.
yeah the name of the game now is just to avoid any company that has shitty recruitment. you can tell in an instant if they are worth your time or not, which I'd say in Canada is about 90% a waste of time.
someone who actually wants to hire will want you and wants to do whatever they can to get a good candidate.
if your interviews are easily cheatable you should probably fix the interviews. back in the day when i was in university we were allowed to use any resources for exams cause you couldnt cheat easily.
anyone I know who actually got a job through leetcode style in the last 2 years cheated. they would get their friends to mirror monitor and then type the answers in from chatgpt LOL
im not doing any coding challenges that aren't real world
if i see anything remotely challenging i dip out. interviewing is just a numbers game nowadays so i dont waste time on interviews if they seem like they're gonna burn me out for the rest of the day. granted i have 11 years experience