> There's no standardized licensing for our profession.

Most professions have no licensing. Doctors and lawyers are the exception, not the norm. This is because doctors have your life in their hands, and lawyers have your freedom in their hands. But usually an App Store app won't kill you or send you to jail. Moreover, licensing is not actually standardized! Every state in the United States has its own different licensing requirements. There are no national or international standards. It's a local government issue. Every time people bring up licensing, they miss these basic facts.

> What if this is to be their first job?

Obviously entry-level jobs and/or internships would hire differently. The crazy thing about software engineering is that they have fresh college grads and 10 year veterans in the same applicant pool for the same jobs! This should never ever happen.

> selecting for people who are good at bullshitting/charming

We already do this to some extent, because "leetcode" tests are bullshit. Anyway, this is just the insane paranoia of the tech industry. Yes, there are liars out there, but it's ridiculous to treat every job candidate like a criminal, guilty until proven innocent. Even our legal system has more respect for people. Remember, hiring is a two-way street: you have to convince the candidate to agree to work for you. Treating the candidate like a liar is not a good first impression. Imagine if you tried that method with dating — you'd never get a second date! You know, there are a lot of bad bosses in the world. I would argue there are more bad bosses than there are bad programmers, because programmers get promoted to management without having any experience or training for management. How about we have job candidates grill the interviewer? If you think "whiteboarding" is bad, then the hiring manager can do a take-home test given by the candidate. ;-) Nothing worse than getting hired by a bad manager.

> they still clearly feel that it's worth the effort to be very selective in their hiring process

I never said companies shouldn't be selective in their hiring process. I actually think they're too unselective in their hiring process. It's a waste of everyone's time to do a whole bunch of "screening" interviews of basically everyone who applies. Instead, companies should only interview the top candidates based on experience and skills, and spend most of their time trying to evaluate those few top candidates.

I would have less objection to doing coding as part of the hiring process if coding tests weren't used so ruthlessly to screen out candidates. Maybe it could be the final step before hiring someone. (Even there, you wouldn't use a "FizzBuzz" test, those just dumb.) But hardly any company uses coding tests in that way. Mass testing of candidates is nothing more than a test of performance anxiety. Mass interviews are just begging for some trivial matter to decide who gets hired.

Let me put it this way: if hiring is based mainly on the interview process and not on the résumé, then it's precisely the bullshitters/charmers you were worried about who will get hired, because those are the kind of people who are best at interviews. And the ability to grind on LeetCode doesn't make you a good programmer.