I wonder whether, by refusing to Leetcode as an IC, if you weed-out proportionally more companies of careerist people just going through the motions.
(Compared to companies of people who care about what they're doing, not just about jumping through hoops and receiving money.)
One company lied, I completed the leetcode-style portion of the technical interview, and politely declined their offer (with an explanation that I don’t like being lied to, and beyond that, I don’t want to work for a company that believes leetcode is a useful skill indicator for regular development work).
So far every company that I’ve worked for doesn’t do leetcode bs, and end up being great companies to work for (genuinely caring about employees, good salary/benefits, actual CoL adjustments in addition to merit-based raises, equity, etc). Small sample size, I know. I also know that every one of my tech friends who has worked at a leetcode-interview company has had some kind of issue with colleagues, management, company structure, or something along those lines (not necessarily at every company, but each person has encountered those sorts of things at at least one company).
To me, avoiding leetcode is a very good way to select for “actual good” companies to work for.