I have worked for a number of companies, big and small, and this is recurring thing.

If you are a person looking to get good salary by becoming programmer but you are not really interested in programming, Java is most likely to be your choice.

You will never advance, but that's fine. If you are bad enough you will just change company and get your salary from another.

There is so much pressure to find Java developers that companies frequently forgo any sane process to check whether the person is actually qualified to do the job. With tools available like CoderPad and the likes there should actually be no excuse to do this but I guess somebody high in HR would be very unhappy seing how few actual Java developers they are able to hire after applying it.