Google L6 coding interview… worth it?

I am a generalist engineer with some domain-specific expertise: infrastructure, scalability, networking.

When I joined my current company (Citadel) the interview was very much tailored to my experience and expertise, so I didn’t even have to prepare, it was absolutely engaging and a lot of fun. I was rewarded for it, and my TC entering was $900k, a couple years ago.

I think I am done with the company now and am looking for something new to learn with a better wlb, and wanted to move to a company that deals with Internet-scale products such as Google.

Got a call from the Google recruiter and it was very weird: nothing at all in my experience was discussed, he didn’t even ask for my resume (I have patents on some cloud technologies, I presented at numerous conferences, … not that it matters but it speaks a little bit about the work I’ve done).

The interviewer just told me he could loop me in for an L6 SWE with 2 coding interviews on algorithms and 2 system design. I asked if there is some domain-specific interview that can be done, he said no, everyone does the same interview.

There is no way in the world I could pass a leetcode interview. I would have to study for many months. I know complexity analysis well and use numerous data structures daily and could certainly tell you when to use a hash table vs ordered map, but not at the level where I could even remotely get a tricky leetcode interview puzzle.

At the same time, in the best case an L6 offer would probably be around $500k TC, which is substantially less than my current TC (I am currently at $1M), but I see this as acceptable since probably I’d end up working half hours at Google, Citadel is definitely a grind and I do 70h a week. My friends at google relax all day.

Should I give up and look for a company with a more friendly interview process, or should I enter the process of wasting my evenings and weekends for 6 months for some stupid leetcode puzzles?

YOE: 10
TC: $1M