This is fairly common.

I've seen the tech tests we receive from potential candidates and they are for the most part appaling. Our technical test is incredibly simple as well and they can do it at home in their own time.

Imagine something as simple as write a console app where you have a class that represents an Account. Write a function to debit and credit an amount that value and have a property to return the balance and a property to show if the value is negative.

The amount of code we see that looks something like:

    public class Account
    {
        public decimal Balance { get; set; }
        public bool IsNegative { get; set; }
        public void Debit(decimal amount)
        {
           Balance = Balance - amount;
           if(Balance < 0)
             IsNegative = true;
        }

        public void Credit(decimal amount)
        {
           Balance = Balance + amount;
           if(Balance >= 0)
             IsNegative = false;
        }
    }

In fact we've seen that almost line for line more than once and they get an hour to do it. Worse, we've seen stuff that can't even compile!

I've wanted something harder for a while as a filter and we changed the test to write a very basic WEB API. The tests you get back are equally hopeless.

When you finally get a test that looks somewhat acceptable and they get an interview, they invariably are awful in the interview if you ask them anything other than the most basic of questions.

We are still looking. Getting someone you can give a problem to and they can't be left alone for a reasonable period of time, with minimum of hand holding, and they will come back with a working, implemented solution is so hard.

If these programmers that can't program drop out of the industry, then great. Maybe we will eventually raise the bar for what it means to be a programmer that we will get some decent software.