[icsa]

> So... how does rejecting on that basis serve the company trying to hire someone?

One way to describe the rationale is that the hiring firm is hiring for 2-sigma capabilities versus 0-sigma or 1-sigma capabilities.

The ability of a software engineer to "shift gears" to the 2-sigma skill set when outlier conditions (e.g. debugging rare events, performance issues et cetera) occur is a form of insurance against having to contract outside resources.

N.B. I am one of those outside resources that gets called in when none of the FTE staff can resolve a difficult (aka "burning platform") problem.