I think the issue here (and the one that's causing all this pain and confusion) is that the level of expertise needed for an engineering role depends significantly on the company in question. For instance, a company like Google (or the other ones in the same league) need someone with a lot of programming experience and knowledge of various algorithms, whereas your small agency or company with a web development team might need someone who can install/maintain the CMS and upgrade the plugins every now and again. What's more, the two companies aren't necessarily paying a different wage for said work, so it's entirely possible that someone with far less coding experience is getting paid a small fortune and someone with lots of experience is on the brink of poverty.
The problems we see in interviews (assuming people are lying, awkward technical tests, etc) all come from this mismatch, and people either not understanding what they're capable of or confusing things deliberately. A senior engineer at a small company might be classed as a junior at a large one, and when question time comes, that causes issues.
And I'm not sure what the solution is there. I mean, the needs for each company are different, and there's always certainly a place where a developer of any standard could find a job. If they can do what their employer wants, does it matter if they don't know fizzbuzz or can't write a multiplication table? Probably not.
The real question is likely about how you distinguish between what a junior/midweight/senior developer/engineer is, in a market where those roles could apply to virtually anyone in the industry.
The problems we see in interviews (assuming people are lying, awkward technical tests, etc) all come from this mismatch, and people either not understanding what they're capable of or confusing things deliberately. A senior engineer at a small company might be classed as a junior at a large one, and when question time comes, that causes issues.
And I'm not sure what the solution is there. I mean, the needs for each company are different, and there's always certainly a place where a developer of any standard could find a job. If they can do what their employer wants, does it matter if they don't know fizzbuzz or can't write a multiplication table? Probably not.
The real question is likely about how you distinguish between what a junior/midweight/senior developer/engineer is, in a market where those roles could apply to virtually anyone in the industry.