[Paul-ish]

Fair enough. I think without coding interviews networking would become even more important than it is now, and it is already very important now. Moving more towards a "networking" world would mean things are less a meritocracy. It would not be about what you know, but who you know. Personally I find that unappealing because it doesn't seem fair, but I know some people aren't interested in "fair" anyways.

Instead of people complaining about coding interviews on HN, you would have a lot of programmers complaining that they are introverts who are just good at their job, and don't think that they should be punished for not being a people person.

[jacquesm]

I don't think teams should be penalized for not hiring people that aren't team players. There are good spots for introverts in IT but teams usually (though not always, I've seen some interesting exceptions to this rule) are not too welcoming to that sort of person.

If the world were gamified to the point that your skills are all that matters then yes, a solely merit based approach would work. But in the world we live in today people skills matter (a lot, actually). On a personal note, this was a very hard lesson for me to absorb, the first years of my career introvert would have been too friendly a description, anti-social probably would have been a better one. But over time I got a bit better at working with others.