This is starting to make sysadmins sound like John Wick.

“And then my son, a few days after his wife died, you steal his 3d printers and smash his fcking Apple 1.”
“The sysadmin will come for you, and you will do nothing because you can do nothing,”

People try to be overachievers by exceeding expectations and then are often late or delivering a broken product.

It’s hard to tell perfectionists not to be perfectionists though.

Sometimes those positions are meant for promoting internal candidates, who obviously sat in, conducting the same interviews in the past. So the difficulty is dialed up to “I am Death incarnate!” levels and they then have scoring data to support their selection of the internal candidate. At a friend’s workplace, they’d opened up a 2-3yr exp position to convert a great intern, and had some great 10+yr exp people apply. My friend said that was a little awkward. Even if Mark Russinovich or Linus Torvalds applied for that job, they still had no chance at getting it. I joked that I might put a resume in his manager’s pile for the creator of the tech stack they were interviewing for, just to hear how that reaction was.

That’s probably not representing even… 5% of these gauntlets, but it might make you feel better. Sometimes, it’s the hiring manager fulfilling the letter but not the spirit of some process, but it means they are frustratingly hard on candidates in the process.

And perhaps, ultimately, you have dodged some bullets.