>This mythical "programmer that can't program" myth
This is absolutely not a myth. I've seen it first hand in an interview. Having said that, it appears that you've been dealing with "interviewers who can't interview" or companies with really stupid hiring practices. These silly tests they do are designed to tease out what you've freely offered. They should just have their engineers look at your repos, verify which commits are yours and how good the code is.
But honestly, imagine working with a place that has such stupid rigidity. I seriously doubt this inflexibility would exist in HR in isolation. I think they did you a favor (accidentally).
This is absolutely not a myth. I've seen it first hand in an interview. Having said that, it appears that you've been dealing with "interviewers who can't interview" or companies with really stupid hiring practices. These silly tests they do are designed to tease out what you've freely offered. They should just have their engineers look at your repos, verify which commits are yours and how good the code is.
But honestly, imagine working with a place that has such stupid rigidity. I seriously doubt this inflexibility would exist in HR in isolation. I think they did you a favor (accidentally).