[D] How important is leetcode in ML?

I recently interviewed with a faang for Applied Data Scientist and it went like this:
- 1x ML interview
- 3 Leetcode interviews
- 1 high level system design interview

How important is leetcode to the actual job of ML / DS practitioners? Is it that important to have 3 more leetcode problems vs 1 ml problem?

When I am doing interview prep I just feel like I am wasting time doing leetcode when I could be upskilling in other …

data data scientist design faang interview interviews job leetcode machinelearning