I think the problem here is just the complexity of the issue. I doubt there can be a standardized test to evaluate you on your software engineering ability. If

I think the problem here is just the complexity of the issue. I doubt there can be a standardized test to evaluate you on your software engineering ability. If such a test could exist I'm sure University Degrees and GPAs would be the only job requirement. However, not so sadly, GPAs are still only a good heuristic. I think the problem of understanding if a person is a capable engineer is so specialized that only a better engineer would be able to evaluate adequately. In which case, are these companies really going to hire and pay engineers competitively to be recruiters/evaluators? And even still, 1. their evaluation would only be for the specialization that was evaluated and 2. Depending on the amount of time spent evaluating, to predict a candidates average performance over time, through stressful times and through calm times, rather than just their perhaps peek or perhaps low performance over the stressful evaluation period, will be exceptionally hard. Maybe I'm wrong but this is just from empirical evidence that I've gathered working with people in university and in the real world during my career. Don't get me wrong, I agree, as demonstrated by its high barriers to entry, it is a real opportunity if someone is able to simplify or scale this. However, I'm not as optimistic as you seem to be that this is even possible. I hope I'm wrong, it would sure make my life even nicer. I would just start working as a freelancer, and take six month vacations since it would be so easy to "get back in the game".