This was pretty much the height of the “bootcamp” era, and while some were still great at teaching solid programming skills, many people who were mediocre coders saw it as a quick way to make money off those who don’t know better. In my opinion, companies started noting more and more that they were hiring people who can barely code in a real software environment but had focused training on resume padding and interview prep, and that many of the college graduates weren’t any better off, so they ramped up to far more rigorous testing, live coding projects, and more and more rounds of interviews just to weed out all the people who had been taught how to BS their way into a tech job. Now the interview process has become so cumbersome that it is more worthwhile to filter out nearly every applicant immediately.