Is there literally any other field where there's an expectation to essentially do fairly intense studying to pass interviews that apparently have very little to do with day to day jobs? Maybe they exist I've never encountered them. The limit of my "studying" for an interview is to just learn a bit about the company, their strategy, etc. either by online research or by talking to people I know connected with them.

ADDED: I suppose one could argue that the Bar exam is a bit like that but that's a credential as are degrees which are not necessarily all that overlapping with the real world.

> ADDED: I suppose one could argue that the Bar exam is a bit like that but that's a credential as are degrees which are not necessarily all that overlapping with the real world.

Yeah, I think most other professions where one might imagine them doing something like a stereotypical software interview, use that instead: a credential obtained by a (perhaps very difficult!) test, maybe with periodic re-tests or required refresher courses to keep the credential valid.

I have a suspicion that a big part of why top-comp software companies keep their interviews so incredibly unpleasant has more to do with discouraging job-hopping among them (so, suppressing wages) than with its being the best process for hiring good developers.

> I have a suspicion that a big part of why top-comp software companies keep their interviews so incredibly unpleasant has more to do with discouraging job-hopping among them (so, suppressing wages) than with its being the best process for hiring good developers.

You have to wonder if this has backfired. ;) Plenty of people job-hop every 1-2 years, and it's pretty common knowledge which companies ask which level of LC difficulty for which level.

It's probably pretty common within a certain cluster. A bunch of other people probably see the barriers and just pass. Or my experience is that others just find grass is distinctly not greener and move on.

Is there literally any other field where there's an expectation that you will work for free 4 hours in order to be considered for the job?

Tons of them. How much time do you think the typical actor or dancer spends auditioning and preparing for the audition? How much time do you think people in many creative fields spend putting together portfolios? And if I'm going to interview with just about anyone, I'm going to spend at least 4 hours prepping for an interview.

I'm not a big fan of take homes in general but a time-consuming job search and interviews is absolutely normal beyond low-skill jobs in a time of labor shortages.

I hard disagree with your disagree :)

1. Some candidates only need to brush up to be in interview shape.

2. To mitigate the need to spend time to prepare, simply use initial assessments to get back in shape. That is, apply to and interview at companies you don’t want to work at first to get more practice problems. If you pass, you get the added benefit of more leverage when negotiating your compensation!

3. As another commenter mentioned, as Leetcode style interviews are shorter, there should be a threshold where $prep_time + $leetcode_interview_time <= $take_home_interview_time. Of course, the threshold adjusts up and down based on your initial level of preparedness.

> That is, apply to and interview at companies you don’t want to work at first to get more practice problems.

If you have enormous amounts of time to waste you might as well do a take-home.

I honestly hate spending 4-6 hours of my time on a pointless take-home, but I suck at leetcode and I absolutely refuse to spend any time on learning it, so they’re the lesser of two evils.

The difference is that you are spending 4-10 hours of your time trying to pass the process for 1 company. If you instead invest 4-10 hours doing leetcode prep, you are studying to pass the process for LOTS of companies. Economies of scale is a huge factor here

Is your 4-6 hour estimate a total of all jobs a candidate applies for?