Interesting! Maybe the stereotype of a tech interview is not the common experience of most developers? This would make more sense and leads me to think that HR is just justifying it's own existence with baroque processes that then make it even less relevant and useful.

FYI I went through a large phase in 2020-2021 where I responded to around 75 job offers and overall had 1-5 calls with ~35 companies each.

My cover letter contains a standard phrase about "references available on request".

No one requested them.

Every so often I come across a useful and hard to find data point - this is one of those times. Thanks for sharing this.