> I don’t know of any other industry who hires senior people the way we do outside of performing arts.
As a mechanical engineer with sufficient years of experience that would be considered senior in the software world but intermediate in the mechanical world, I have had interviews where we only talked, interviews where I was given a task and put in front of a computer with one hour to complete it, and interviews where I was sent a problem to work on at home. These interview techniques, while perhaps more prevalent, are by no means limited to the software world.
As a mechanical engineer with sufficient years of experience that would be considered senior in the software world but intermediate in the mechanical world, I have had interviews where we only talked, interviews where I was given a task and put in front of a computer with one hour to complete it, and interviews where I was sent a problem to work on at home. These interview techniques, while perhaps more prevalent, are by no means limited to the software world.