Competitive Programming Remains Highly Valuable | Generated by AI
In 2025, even with powerful AI coding assistants (Copilot, Cursor, Claude 3.5/4, Grok-4, etc.) being able to solve almost any LeetCode Hard or Codeforces 1900–2400 problem in seconds, doing competitive programming yourself is still extremely useful and makes a lot of sense — especially if you want to become a really strong software engineer. Here’s why people who are actually good (FAANG/staff-level, startup founders, quant traders, etc.) still grind LeetCode/Codeforces in 2025:
1. Big Tech & High-Paying Companies Still Use It as a Signal
- Google, Meta, Jane Street, Hudson River Trading, Citadel, Apple, Netflix, Stripe, Databricks, Snowflake, etc. still have algorithmic interview rounds in 2025.
- Even if you use AI in your day-to-day job, interviews are 45–60 minutes on a whiteboard/ CoderPad with no AI allowed.
- Top companies raised the bar: Google L5+, Meta E5+, etc. now routinely ask 2300–2600 rated Codeforces-style problems.
- Startups that pay $800k–$1.5M total comp (e.g., AI labs, prop trading, HFT) almost exclusively hire from Codeforces red/orange coders.
2. It Trains the Skill That AI Still Can’t Replace: Problem Decomposition + Debugging Under Pressure
- AI can write correct code if you give it the perfect prompt, but in real systems work you often don’t know the right abstraction yet.
- Competitive programming forces you to break down ambiguous problems fast, try ideas, debug quickly — exactly what you do when a production service is down at 3 a.m. or when you’re prototyping a new feature.
- People who are Codeforces 2200+ almost always become the fastest prototypers and best debuggers on their team.
3. It’s Still the Best Way to Learn Advanced Algorithms & Data Structures Deeply
- You can read about segment trees, FFT, flow networks, or sqrt decomposition, but you only really internalize them after implementing them 20–30 times under time-constrained.
- In 2025, real-world problems that benefit from these show up more than ever: kernel optimizations, GPU programming, distributed systems scheduling, large-scale recommendation systems, etc.
4. It Keeps Your “Coding Reflexes” Sharp
- Strong engineers say things like “I can feel when a solution is O(n²)” or “this smells like a DP on trees.”
- That intuition only comes from solving 1000–2000 problems.
- Even if you use AI daily, you still want to be the one steering it, not the one who stares blankly when the AI suggestion is wrong.
5. The Job Market Is More Competitive Than Ever
- 2023–2024 layoffs + flood of new grads + self-taught bootcampers + AI hype → way more applicants per role.
- Being able to casually say “Codeforces 2500, solved 1800 problems” or “top 500 globally in a round instantly puts you in the top 1% of candidates.
- Many companies (especially trading firms and AI labs) auto-shortlist high-rated CP accounts.
6. It’s Actually Fun for a Certain Personality Type
- A lot of the best engineers treat it like a sport/climbing/gaming — leaderboards, streaks, virtual contests, etc.
- The dopamine loop is real and keeps many people sharp for years.
When It’s Less Necessary (2025 edition)
- If you’re going into pure frontend, DevOps, data science (non-ML-eng), or most startup CRUD web dev → LeetCode Medium grinding is probably overkill.
- If you already have multiple FAANG-level offers or you’re a staff+ engineer → you can probably coast, though many still do it for fun.
Bottom Line
In 2025, LeetCode/Codeforces is like doing kata in martial arts: the real fight (building products) looks different, but the muscle memory and reflexes you build are directly transferable when things get hard — and things still get hard surprisingly often, even with AI everywhere.
If your goal is to be in the top 5–10% of engineers (pay, impact, optionality), grinding competitive programming is still one of the highest-ROI activities you can do.