The reason I suggest this is not that I am interested in the rest of their computer: I don't want keyboard or mouse control, and our rubrics have absolutely nothing to do with what else is running your box. What I am interested in is letting the candidate work with their favorite tools. It's your computer, with your favorite editor, with whichever bindings you have, and whichever libraries added to your project as you like to use. In our interviews you can also check language docs and stack overflow if you like: In fact, it's pretty common for people that pass the interview to do so.
Interviewing is stressful, and other than letting people work on a longer interview project on their own time, the best thing I can do for my candidates is to make them be at ease in every other way possible. In case people worry about privacy, I am happy if they just share a window, especially if it's for an IDE that lets them both see the code and show me test results at the same time.
So In my employer's case, a preference for screensharing is not really about treating people like cattle. We discuss all those pros and cons with candidates prior to screening, and accommodate them in almost every case. While I'd agree 100% that the ProctorU plan wound not be something I'd find acceptable, there's a great case for wanting access to your screen that is for the candidate's benefit.
My main 'concern' was about "The proctor then proceeded to shut down all my running applications for me" - the fuck is this? Pardon my language.
I'd never install something like LogMeIn/TeamViewer though.
There are plenty of tools to share the code view in many IDEs.. there are sites and services dedicated to this. To have access to my entire desktop, INCLUDING control of my mouse/keyboard and installing software... I would have a hard time telling them not to go fuck themselves... because the level of disrespect in treating an adult like a child student is so high its painful...
I would have terminated it. I'm not a privacy nut, but I am a respect nut... and if your level of respect for your engineers allows you to enforce such a ridiculous policy of "testing" in the interview process, well, you don't have much respect for the engineers... or their time, or their own privacy (on their own machine).
I wont work for a company who installs "screen watching" software on your machine. I wont work for a company who middle-man's the SSL cert. I wont work for a company who drug tests. (I smoke MJ, but a lot of companies state MJ doesnt fail, but I still refuse to take a drug test, its principle)
We aren't cattle. When you're treated as such in the interview process, you can strongly infer that you will be treated as such in your position.