Does your wife belong to some kind of professional guild?

You'll find most other high qualification professions require a body to certify them, conduct examinations, disqualify them for poor outcomes, organise ongoing training and so on. And most importantly (for guild members), limit numbers and ensure the government makes it illegal to conduct activities unless you are a guild member.

Developing has none of this - it's the unwashed masses. You get the full bell curve from useless CS graduate to genius high school dropout all applying for the same job, and everything in-between.

> When she gets interviewed, they fly her out and spend 2 days showing her around, taking her out, and trying to convince her to work for them.

This exact scenario has happened around a half dozen times for me as a software engineer over the past twenty years. Basically any time I’m considering a company based in another US state, they fly me out for interviews, at least take me to dinner (if not some larger group outing), and then have someone show me around the city the next day trying to convince me to move there.

I’ve flown out or drove long distance for many software developer interviews and I’ve never had anyone “show me around” the city. Although they’re usually fine providing an extra hotel night so I have time to do so myself. Sadly it feels like post pandemic the on-site interview (at least for software engineers) may be a thing of the past.

There is a shortage of actual developers. But there is no shortage of people who don't care about what they are doing or whether they can do it at all.

When you are looking through piles of thousands of people, you are looking for ways to pare it down so that you are left at every step with higher concentration of the first group. Because spending same amount of effort on everybody is not a viable strategy.

> There is a shortage of actual developers. But there is no shortage of people who don't care about what they are doing or whether they can do it at all.

In nearly 20 years of doing this I’ve have never had one of these dreaded fake developers make it through the resume screen, initial phone call, and a conversation with an engineer.

And if I did, we’d just fire them as soon as it was clear they lied about their ability.

I have had plenty of the other extreme, very technically proficient developers who turned out to be terrible employees for other reasons.

My initial point is that if you can afford to make your screening process arduous enough that you’re turning away otherwise qualified people because they don’t want to work for you bad enough to jump through your hoops, then there’s not a shortage.

If there was really a shortage, you’d do what every other industry does. Hire based on resume, and fire the fakers.

> In nearly 20 years of doing this I’ve have never had one of these dreaded fake developers make it through the resume screen, initial phone call, and a conversation with an engineer....And if I did, we’d just fire them as soon as it was clear they lied about their ability.

I've spent most of the last 25 years working independently. A large number of the 'fakers' (or just... currently-low-skilled) don't apply to large companies with screening processes. They build custom one-off software/websites/etc for small businesses. Those small business people have no ability to judge skills or quality. Some of the tech folks doing that may, at some point, try to apply 'up' in to larger companies, moving away from independent/freelance, and some of those may get weeded out.