There is a big difference between computer science as taught and software development in practice. These hiring practices are there to weed out people just can't design applications or write code with any proficiency.
But can't that be said about every discipline of engineering? I could be wrong but these hiring practices are particularly prevalent in the software roles compared to the other major discipline of engineering. I'm more curious to what is different about software engineering/development roles that require these methods. The amount of applications or size of the company doesn't seem like a logical reason since I've seen equally sized (employee-wise) companies weed out and select specific roles pretty well (relatively).
