I agree. It's not a good idea to refuse to hire either young or old candidates. It's also not a good idea to refuse to hire experienced or inexperienced candidates.
These candidates have, as groups, different characteristic strengths and weaknesses. You need to give them multiple tests to see those. Leetcode is not a good test, but you do have to test a new grad on something, which might mean a vaguely leetcode-adjacent test like "go print this json tree of directories to the console then tell me what you did in your third year of uni".
These candidates have, as groups, different characteristic strengths and weaknesses. You need to give them multiple tests to see those. Leetcode is not a good test, but you do have to test a new grad on something, which might mean a vaguely leetcode-adjacent test like "go print this json tree of directories to the console then tell me what you did in your third year of uni".