There&#x27;s selectivity, and there&#x27;s courtesy and respect. Companies are entitled to be as selective as they like, and if those are the kinds of tests that yield the people they want to hire then good for them. On the other hand courtesy and respect would demand that you&#x27;re clear with the candidate about your expectations and requirements, that you don&#x27;t waste their time, that you respect the investment of time by communicating after the interview to let them know how they did, and perhaps even that you let them know up front what areas you expect to cover. Otherwise, as was noted in an earlier comment, it really is just a lottery to see if you happen to be fresh on whatever thing they happen to ask you.<p>There is another side to this which leads me to ask why companies feel they have to be so defensive? My wife is a registered nurse on a cardiac critical care ward. If she doesn&#x27;t know what she&#x27;s doing actual people can actually die, something that is a rare outcome for even the worst software developer. Nevertheless, she has a BS, and work experience, and when she interviews they don&#x27;t require her to stand up at a whiteboard and prove she&#x27;s a nurse all over again. They respect her experience, and the questions are more about process, work habits, personality, etc. In the software development world we appear to have zero respect for experience, and I wonder why that is? Have employers been burned so often? Or is this more of a geek cred gauntlet thing?