Is competitive programming relevant?

It is the most underrated prep there is, because interviews and contests are testing the same thing at heart: an unseen problem, under time, solved by reasoning from the constraints. Competitive programming is simply a superset of that, with stronger constraints, a wider set of techniques, harsher feedback, and far less room to lean on a memorized template. Its techniques transfer straight down into interviews while the reverse does not hold, which is exactly why strong competitive programmers tend to breeze through standard interview rounds without ever having touched a top 150 list. None of this requires becoming a red coder for it to pay off, either, since reaching Codeforces Expert (1600+ rating) already makes most interview problems feel easy, and past that point your time is better spent building things and going deep in whatever you actually want to do.

The stereotype that competitive programmers cannot write real software is also wrong, and has been a common misconception for a long time. The first-principles thinking contest skill builds is exactly what quant firms like Jane Street, Citadel, and HRT have sought for over decades, and what AI and systems teams increasingly want now, because it's the part that transfers to problems no one has a template for. The fastest way to stop worrying about interviews altogether is to get authentically good at this, which happens to be the one thing most people refuse to actually try.