Software developers are protected by their managers and, to the extent possible, exposed to limited and controlled stressors. I wouldn't say that getting assign

Software developers are protected by their managers and, to the extent possible, exposed to limited and controlled stressors. I wouldn't say that getting assignments of limited and predictable difficulty is realistic, though, no matter how hard a manager tries. Even a junior dev will get tasks that turn out to be a lot harder than anybody anticipated, so it's reasonable to want to see how they respond. The only way to do that is to keep turning up the difficulty in the interview until they struggle. As for managers of software developers, that feels like an entirely different beast to me. Managers have to be ready to be exposed to arbitrary and unlimited stressors, up to and including existential threats to the company or to their position, and they not only have to manage their own reactions to those stressors, they have to be mindful of their reports' stress at the same time. A manager needs to be able, on their own, to put events at work or in an interview into perspective and not turn toxic. I've helped interview managers, but I have never helped plan the interview as a whole, so I don't know what reasonable limits are.