I don’t know. I think this whole discussion is very vague if go by the example in the article, it sounds unlikely the developer described as the wildcard in the article would do very well on LeetCode.
A smart person who loves to learn and do new things and gets excited under pressure? Sounds like exactly the kind of person who would ace leetcode interviews to me, at least if they got a technical degree.
Such people hate to grind, so if they managed to get a technical degree they are smart and interested enough in the subject that they studied for fun or didn't need to study. So either they would gladly study for leetcode, or they would pass without studying it.
This assumes they have a degree though, if you take such a developer without a degree then I'd agree with you. But I wouldn't classify such a person as a generalist developer, they are a generalist who can code.
