Yeah, I hear you. This is something people outside tech have trouble grokking. In many tech companies, you really have to pass technical exams that we call "interviews". I think the term interview creates an ambiguity that leads to this confusion.
I know a lot of people who work outside tech, and they actually kind of shudder when they hear about what happens in our field. Yes, interviews outside tech are stressful, and knowledge and experience will be probed, but the whole "here's a marker and a whiteboard, find all strings in this set that combine to form a substring of any other string in this set"? Yeah, that's unusual.
I think there are ways to have a programming career that don't involve this kind of thing, but you do limit your options.
I know a lot of people who work outside tech, and they actually kind of shudder when they hear about what happens in our field. Yes, interviews outside tech are stressful, and knowledge and experience will be probed, but the whole "here's a marker and a whiteboard, find all strings in this set that combine to form a substring of any other string in this set"? Yeah, that's unusual.
I think there are ways to have a programming career that don't involve this kind of thing, but you do limit your options.