[purplehoodie]

Minor bikeshedding, but orchestra auditions are more about measuring musicianship at various time constraints: sight reading - O(minutes) of prep, audition excerpts - O(days) of prep, and personal repertoire - O(months to years of prep).

By and large, professional musicians are paid for a standard level of performance competence and a strong level of versatility. The small handful of remainders are the famous ones renown for exceptional levels of performance.

Plenty of professionals are paid to play the musical equivalent of e-commerce site.

[hiptobecubic]

It feels more like auditions for tech involved being assigned a random instrument, even though you've been playing flute for ten years and they are hiring because they need a flautist.

[randcraw]

Pushing the metaphor further is surely silly, but I'd compare s/w dev to jazz improv or the ability to deftly adopt the musical expressive style of a new ensemble, and s/w design to musical composition or arranging. Switching instruments is more like switching programming languages or stacks. Presumably appropriate auditions should assess these complex skills and not rudimentary fare like scales or key transposition, AKA leetcode.