> "How do people like this get hired for a programming job in the first place?"

No whiteboarding or coding test during the interview process. As much as I detest them, I wouldn't work for a company that doesn't use them to screen candidates.

I've been developing software professionally for a little over 12 years, and believe myself to be a fairly component. About a year ago I was flown in for an onsight interview for a fairly high level Sr engineer position at upstairs Amazon. During this interview I was handed a blank piece of paper and a pen to implement a fairly trivial programming task. I couldn't even put a couple nested for loops together. I guess over time it just becomes musscle memory. I was totally befuddled even just trying to write a curly brace.

I bet came across to them as totally incompetent fool... "Slipping through the cracks of multiple pre-screening technical interviews before the onsite..."