Ask HN: How do you deal with dev interviews

I've been in the industry for over 5 years now and ever since, the whole software interview process looked like a right joke to me. it's always the same starting with recruiter call, behavioural with company and then the unrealistic hackerrank take at home or on the spot test.

I mean assuming you are into your 30s+ having left Uni ages ago, have family, expenses, other problems and hobbies to deal with how do you even bother keeping up with some tricky little tests that determine your future?

I understand if you are some 20s yo prestigious Uni graduate, sworn into hackerrank with no baggage and other problems on your mind, who can't wait to show off their algo. But when you are not how do you even get a decent dev job?

These are the types of tests that never come up during your day to day work, I mean lets say you're backend dev all you do is some CRUD microservices and brainless REST APIs. When would you ever merge sort or binary search...

And even though I've been finding time to practice them and always give it my best shot I still dread them. I don't know if I'm really bad at them or simply retarded but I can solve most 'easy' and some of the 'medium' tests, but when it comes to the interview ones they go well beyond this and I barely manage them (and it's not even FAANGs). If it's not a too crappy company they always send you these tests, it's never just some realistic test or take home project to do.

So far all of my jobs came with realistic test or take home projects to show, maybe because the companies were always crap? The only sort of good one that I got, magically let me write realistic REST endpoints on the spot as a test, but these companies barely exist and you can't stay there forever.