Such tests identify aptitude, not specific knowledge. At least in theory.

And yeah, most of what software engineers do is very standard, and at least conceptually traces back to ideas pioneered in the 1970s.

you can absolutely create a standard test with predicting power on success as a software engineer. Real Law isn’t standardized either, neither is real medicine. They are partly art as well.

> What we do as software engineers isn't standardized. If you are doing things that have been done before, you are wasting your time.

At the same time, this type of thinking is what results in engineers wasting time and money re-inventing the wheel, on things that usually have no business value. Just look at how much time and money was wasted at Uber reinventing simple technology solutions.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21250917

According to https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2023/#section-developer-role... , about 58% of developers are web front-end, back-end, or full stack. That's probably an undercount since their survey includes non-practitioner roles such as management, students, and QA. All of those will be using more or less the same frameworks, libraries, and other software to target the same browsers, database engines, operating systems, etc. Doesn't seem like that much of a stretch to be able to write a test that evaluates proficiency in the common underlying concepts used across web software.