I don’t think the weird hiring proclivities of giant companies, nor the rote learning some put into things like Leetcode, should obscure the power and beauty of the algorithms and data structures available to you. Maybe there are other ways into this stuff, but being able to pattern match problems into known (and perhaps even near-optimal) solutions is a tool to your creativity, not a hindrance. It brings conception and execution closer. But it should feel like a series of epiphanies, not like maths homework.