You're Not Interviewing for the Job. You're Auditioning for the Job Title

And most of the steps in the interview process are not even technical (depending on the company), so most of your final score probably comes from your sales presentation^W^Wcommunication skills.

I assume the alternative is that you give some standardized "civil service" exam.

Honestly if it’s an exam you only take once or once every decade it’s an improvement over the current system.

I can't speak to developer exams so much but companies are often looking for specific people who aren't well categorized by standardized exams.

They’re looking for both. I’m just saying compress the Leetcode rigmarole to a one-time certification exam and then save the interview for the specific people questions. Like how other engineering disciplines do it.

The one time I took a bunch of tests was out of school for a government job--which I didn't take because it was the lowest of my offers.

I do think the unsatisfactory (to many people here) answer is to assume that if you graduated from the right schools you're probably OK with respect to certification.

Ultimately the status quo of getting bombarded with Leetcode rounds every time you want to switch jobs seems untenable, even if in theory each round should get easier with the grind.

What happened to DRY. Just take it once and have it be recognized by all.

Yet:

1.) "Every time" is 10+ years apart for a lot of folks

and

2.) If you look at the requirements for things like PEs (at least the last time I looked at them), you have requirements like 4-year degrees, having worked under a PE for some number of years, etc. in addition to the tests, which I assume a lot of people here would object to.