I don't have the greatest work ethic, I waste time sometimes, forget things, am not too organized, etc. It's mostly the fact that 1) I do SWE as a hobby and 2) learn obsessively without BSing myself that gets me into jobs.
However my teammate at my last job. He probably didnt have the same level of intimate knowledge of systems as me. But his work ethic was just breathtaking. Mine simply wouldn't compare in a million years. Averaged over a large enough period, we both ended up doing the same amount of useful work.
Similarly there were others with different "approaches", just included the above 2 cases as an example.
Now. It wasn't the best experiment since we helped each other a lot. But I came away feeling it's true.
My hypothesis is that in less abstract work, the number of approaches is limited, and hiring practices in SWE have just been made the same as those jobs.
I don't really complain since I really can't think of a framework for hiring for abstract jobs that will yield better results than the current one. But who knows, maybe we'll find one.
FWIW, I think leetcode, just one round to bring down the applicant count to a number that's possible to interview {hard if there are too many, medium if there are few, or just Two Sum to weed out folks that can't write a for loop if you have just tens of applicants}, and then system design as the main interview, is a good system. For system design I would skip the common ones like "design a rate limiter/load balancer" stuff that people memorize. IMO it's easily possible to create unique system/API design questions that match the job somewhat.