I've been thinking about this lately.

I recently crossed 700+ solved problems, reached a 1986 contest rating, and completed my 4th All Kill. Over time, I've covered most of the common topics: Arrays, Binary Search, Sliding Window, Trees, Graphs, Greedy, DP, and even some Digit DP.

But the more I learn, the more I realize that the answer isn't simply "solve more problems."

At different points in my journey, I thought:

100 problems would be enough.
Then I thought 300 would be enough.
Then 500.
Now I'm at 700+, and I still discover new patterns and approaches every week.

So I'm curious:

For those who have already cracked coding interviews at product-based companies, how many LeetCode problems did you solve before you felt interview-ready?

More importantly:

Did the number even matter?
Was contest participation more valuable?
How much DP, Graphs, and advanced topics were actually needed?
At what point did you stop focusing on quantity and start focusing on pattern recognition?

Would love to hear experiences from people who have interviewed at startups, mid-sized companies, and FAANG-level companies.

Looking forward to learning from the community.