Is anyone else experiencing nigh impossible testing requirements for software engineering roles?

First, let's consider nursing and law, two demanding careers that have intense testing requirements:

1. Nursing is a profession that requires licensure by state as a safeguard for public health. NCSBN issues national, uniform requirements for licensure by exam or endorsement, renewals, and reinstatement.
2. In the United States, bar examinations are administered by agencies of individual states and territories. In most jurisdictions, the examination is two days long and consists of multiple-choice questions, essay questions, and "performance tests" that model certain kinds of legal writing.

In both cases, the person taking the test:

1. Knows the minimum score to pass, and the score they received
2. Has the option, and is encouraged, to take practice tests
3. Has some idea of what to expect on the real test
4. Can retake the test if they don't pass the first time

However, since there are no state-regulated requirements for software engineering tests, so you'd never know if:

1. The tests are uniformly given
2. The test accurately captured your answers
3. How the test is reviewed and scored, especially if there is a coding section, or anything that allows for subjectivity
4. The questions on the test are relevant to the role for which you are applying, before taking the test

Also, you:

1. Almost never know the minimum score to pass, nor the score you received
2. Won't know what you will be tested on, since every employer creates their own tests, unless the recruiter gives you some hint beforehand
3. Won’t get the opportunity to retake these tests

And yet, according to one recruiter: "90% of our client base requires a technical assessment."

Apparently, having a portfolio of one’s work is no longer relevant. References from prior engagements are also meaningless. Experience, both of a technical and business nature, is worthless.

It’s all about the test, and that's only if the hiring manager can’t find anything to discriminate against based on a Zoom call, which is now a requirement for many companies.

In several cases, these are not "one hour and done" tests...these tests can take anywhere from two to six hours (two even had a lunch break!), requiring multiple Q&A tests, live coding reviews with multiple developers already on the team, a review with HR, a project manager, and others. It seems that many companies are now structuring the interview process to almost match an oral defense of one’s dissertation for a doctoral program.

So, why is this formality necessary? According to one hiring manager:

"We like to see how the developer interacts with someone on the team and what their communication skills are while solving a problem. We use this style rather than take home to more replicate a real-world development scenario and see how someone thinks/approaches a problem. It also gives the candidate ability to see the style of their potential future teammates."

Any hiring manager that believes that what happens during an interview is any reflection of how a person will work under real-world circumstances is completely deluded. Most candidates are nervous beyond what would be considered normal, they're concerned about how the team might judge them, their coding style, and at least a dozen other issues. On the other side of the table, those developers are more like teachers, holding the answer key to the test they’re about to give. Unfortunately, this also tends to feed their egos, since many already believe that the only correct answers are theirs. And again, you’d never know how this part of the process is scored or evaluated, let alone of it was done consistently for each candidate.

For example, in one case, someone already on the team rattled off nearly 50 very specific supporting technologies, to see which ones I'd worked with previously. What was the cutoff for "acceptable"? I have no idea, as he didn't say.

Did the role require someone to actively use and know all the technologies referenced? I doubt it, but if it did, that role should have had a significantly higher billing rate than what I was going for at the time.

In an industry where people have "religious wars" over:

1. Code formatting and comments
2. How much of your code is based on patterns
3. ORMs vs. explicitly written code to access a database
4. using 'if' statements; some developers believe this is sacrilege now

It is literally impossible to know how a few developers are going to rate you during an interview. And, let's not forget about the possibility that some will give a negative rating because of personal biases, and not because you said or did anything wrong. Usually, the most toxic folks on the team do not participate in the interview, but their friends do, and you'll find out rather quickly which ones have biases against you for things that you cannot change.

And if you happen to pass these tests? In one case, the “consulting firm” produced a seriously flawed test (literally, the test scrambled answers depending on how you navigated through the test; i sent my actual answers in a follow-up e-mail), but I apparently passed it, although the following happened almost immediately:

1. The first project was cancelled under very suspicious circumstances
2. For the second project, the hiring manager allegedly made outrageous claims, such as “Azure, .NET 5, SQL Server 2019, Zoom, and WebAPI are older tech stacks(!)”. And, even after sharing that I was running Windows 11 Preview on one VM, had recently upgraded all of my servers (physical and VM) to Windows Server 2022, and was building projects using Visual Studio 2022 Preview (with .NET 6), it didn’t matter.
3. The third project disappeared before a call could happen with the client
4. The fourth project was also sent to me by offshore recruiters, on the same day, which almost always falls into the “throw everything at the wall to see what sticks” category

I think there was another dynamic behind these events; I may go into detail in another post.

It almost appears as though companies have decided to implement a new "poll tax" for software engineers, making it nearly impossible to get past the test, while simultaneously claiming there is a "shortage of software engineers". This seems self-inflicted, and if not due to utter incompetence and/or inexperience, must be a maliciously intentional effort to exclude people. I suspect there are many reasons why companies are doing this, but I wanted to see if anyone else is experiencing these issues.

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