Two things:

1. Agreed that skills tests are kind of a necessity. After all, there's no licensure for developers, so we have no way to confirm skills. A 2.5hr timed skills test is over the top, though. Especially given the asymmetrical power dynamic - I take a 2.5hr test, the manager just chills and waits for the response. It's insulting that the company has no skin in the game.

2. In the real world, if I'm building a linked list or traversing a graph from scratch, then I'm doing something wrong. There are libraries to do that & their open source implementations are way more refined and well-tested than anything I'd write. I've written plenty of complex code, but none of it was anything like the coding challenges I've received.