I have noticed that system design questions are asked in mid-level and even entry-level SWE roles. It's bizarre to me that expecting a fresh grad to build twitter is somehow an accurate assessment of that person's coding skills.

I think hiring managers have run out of hard questions to ask to sufficiently justify gate keeping the high-paying jobs they are dolling out - every grad knows to prep with CTCI, EPI, and leetcode; but what happens when all 10 of the 10 candidates you interview know how to invert a...whatever-tree in optimal O(n) in ~10 mins (bc they all used the same books to prep)? "Well, then you ask harder questions" is the superficial response from hiring managers. And that's how asking hard-level leetcodes in phone interviews becomes the norm.

I am curious to see how far this goes.

Remember the days when FizzBuzz would be sufficient to get a job? I don't, unfortunately, but perhaps some of you do.

We need to think harder about how we hire people. There are better ways.

Off-topic, but the chicken/egg metaphor can be used for any job in America (and probably the rest of the world), not just senior software engineering jobs. I had this problem when I graduated into the great recession in 2008 - every employer wanted 2 years of experience for entry-level jobs, not realizing or caring that you need the job in the first place to get that exp. And that's how you get a skills shortage over many years.