I strongly disagree. Leetcode-style exercises are detached from the realities of software engineering, and signal ad-hoc preparation over actual competence and skills.

Just because you do not know how to implement a, say, ray search algorithm with optimal complexity that does not mean you cannot implement a background worker, a card with accessibility, a service which securely handle RESTful requests, etc. So why aren't you excluding everyone who is not a ray search experts from your application process? Do you seek to hire competent software engineers, or do you want to have a room of ray search enthusiasts?

At lower levels, you can certainly play sub min-maxed moves that are more likely to confuse or pressure a weaker opponent. You could call these bluffs. Opening theory is also a wonderful game, you're essentially playing a game of "let's bet that you haven't prepared this particular set of lines as well as I have" with the opponent. The same thing goes for game styles, open vs closed, etc.

Last but not least, playing a perfect game of chess is so far out of the realm of possibility for humans, that the entire "there's always a correct move" is completely irrelevant. We are now at a point where 7-piece endgames have been completely solved, and it involves 4.2×10^14 positions. Good luck memorizing that, and the scaling from there on out is not pretty.

In this sense, chess occupies a very interesting spot; somewhat calculatable for a human (and yes, tactics dominate up to say 2000 ELO), but there's plenty of room for creativity and strategy also. It's also played at an insanely high level, which makes it a worthwhile challenge and time investment. What it does NOT have is randomness. I often wonder what the competitive landscape of a chess variant involving some randomness would look like, or if it would fundamentally change the nature of the game.