This is 100% true. Earlier in my career I might have jumped through these types of hoops because I needed a job. Today, if a potential employer were to tell me I needed to go write X test program for free or do some bullshit test on Hacker Rank I would just say, "No thanks, I've got better things to do." Then I would move on to the next employer.
At this stage in my career when I still get this type of bullshit from someone I just find it ridiculous.
I'm just left thinking, "Did you read my cover letter? Where I told you how I worked on a 3 million CLOC air flight cockpit software that runs in actual planes; so if there are bugs real people would die? How about the part where I discussed being the software lead on financial derivatives trading software; where bugs could lead to millions or even billions of dollars be lost? Did you see that software library I maintain in my free time that has over 1 million installs? And you still aren't sure I'm qualified? Well no sense wasting any more of your time; I'm clearly not qualified then."
Ironically what I would consider the two best interviews of my career went like this respectively.
1) I was called in for a technical interview. The VP of the IT department sat down with me and asked me to tell him about my work experience. I gave him an overview and then he started delving in deeper and deeper on the subjects that I said I had experience in to see what my level of knowledge was. This went on for about 1 1/2 hours at which point he stopped me and said, "Ok, how much money do you need?" I gave him a number to which he replied, "We could do that. Hold on a minute." The VP then went and brought in his top developer (turns out he's also the hiring director) and then we basically repeated the whole thing, but dove into even more technical details. That lasted somewhere between 2 and 3 hours. At the end of it this he says, "I can have an offer letter ready for you tomorrow. When can you start."
2) Preface - I was referred by someone already working with this company.
I get a phone call from the company CEO (small start-up). He asks me a few questions about my background, some soft skill type of questions, nothing real technical. After 20 or 30 minutes of conversation that is basically just a "can we get along with each other" check the CEO says, "Ok, I'll need you to do a technical interview with our team lead." A couple days later I get a call from the team lead.
The conversation goes basically like this.
Him, "Ok, so here's the deal. Steve says your really fucking smart and Steve is really fucking smart so it's probably true. Elijah (CEO) thinks we need to do technical interviews, but really they're all just bullshit anyway. If it turns out you can't do the job we'll fire you in less than three months; if you actually know what you're doing we won't. So do you want the job or not?"
Me, "Yeah"