It could also be that there are many paths to and definitions for the skillsets that make good professional workers. Even if you create a list of the most desir

It could also be that there are many paths to and definitions for the skillsets that make good professional workers. Even if you create a list of the most desirable features of a software developer there are infinite ways of actually getting those features and they will not even look the same for 2 people. One person who could be driven to learn and improve themselves by sheer ego, and another by absolute anxiety from bad things happening in their lives and a need for security and understanding. Those people look quite different when they work, and respond very differently to the high pressure situations of an interview. In the end you'll end up trending towards the same people that are in charge of interviews, because you'll tend to want to work with people that match your expectations of what a productive professional looks like (which can sometimes be "diversity" itself, though usually with a lot of degrees). The other problem is that people tend to stick with what they know through their careers, and be around similar people. Its a fact of life of any interviewing programmer that with the exact same job requirements you can completely bomb one interview and look like a saint in the next. This is something that isn't easily quantified, which pretty much goes against the whole point of software to begin with, creating quite an interesting problem.