It's only going to get worse. As automation continues, jobs are going to be less about "being efficient and useful to society" and more about "proving other humans that you deserve to get money". And interviews are one manifestation of the latter.

I think SWE as a profession is in a little bit of denial, because we honestly (want to) believe we are being efficient. But the reality probably is that most SW companies don't do very useful work, but rather, struggling to make ends meet, are fighting tooth and nail to prove (often through deception and introducing complexity) that somebody needs their software. And this of course in turn affects the workers in these companies.

So SWEs will have to admit (mostly like everybody else) that it is actually a game of musical chairs, and if they don't want this game to happen in this fashion, they will have to institute some other way to play this game (of proving that you are useful), for example, by having a profession association and a profession exam.

Think about it. If there would really be that much work to be done in SWE, the companies would just take everybody. But they don't, they are more and more picky. There have been other articles linked from HN (such as http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/education/the-stem-crisis-i...) that say the same thing.