Yes. I work as a contractor and freelance dev. So, my interviewing session per client is "Can you do this?" rather than "Can you do this to show me you can do t

Yes. I work as a contractor and freelance dev. So, my interviewing session per client is "Can you do this?" rather than "Can you do this to show me you can do that for me?". It isn't that people are more pragmatic when hiring a contractor. But in fact contractors are hired to do specific tasks. These days, your traditional software engineers are asked to all sorts of things and asked to learn all sort of things as the company grow. I think that there was a probably a time where the scope was limited and recruiter knew what are the problems a candidate might need to fix. Tech stack wise I would guess we are in an era of ambiguity. Disclaimer: Haven't worked a day as an employee anywhere.