Feeling like LC is BS that only works for Big Tech? How do you learn for a job if not doing LC?

3rd year undergrad here. I'm currently preparing for my first "normal" full-time role after spending the last three years in startups and doing contracting work. I learned a ton in those environments

3rd year undergrad here. I'm currently preparing for my first "normal" full-time role after spending the last three years in startups and doing contracting work. I learned a ton in those environments working on interesting projects (not some boring CRUD apps), but now I'm preparing for corporate interviews. I'm studying a pretty broad range of topics that commonly come up: Python and Go internals, low-level Docker, AWS (I'm working toward the Solutions Architect cert even though I’m not a huge fan of certs), Terraform, System Design (low/high level), Kubernetes, and CI/CD. At the same time, I've started reading the books recommended by my friend from Google (Designing Data Intensive Apps, DB Internals, System Perf). I make daily notes. When a job description lists all this tooling (Docker, K8s, Terraform, etc.), I wonder whether diving deep into them right now is the best use of my time - or whether I’d become a stronger engineer by focusing more on the concepts from the books. That said, my top priority is landing a job soon, and I know corporate interviews often test this kind of practical/theoretical knowledge. Do you think the learning path I’m on right now makes sense given my goal of getting hired? I’m fully committed to going through the books this year, but I’m also conscious that I have a limited runway before I really need to land something. (I also forgot quite a bit after switching careers once into business process automation.) I’d really value your honest advice as someone who’s been through this. PS. yes I have studied LC: I did around 250 mediums - but from my experience most non Big Tech companies don't push for LC so much. PS. #2: yes I have pretty strong commercial projects on GitHub. Really appreciate any thoughts you have 🙏 Best, J (To be very precise my current learning path looks like this: I ask Grok about all the topics about subject X, ask him about each topic doing a deep dive from basic to advanced, I make notes and rehearse) - it takes lots of time, but I'm not sure there's a better way to prepare for random questions from recruiters).