Yep. More than once.

I got frustrated by interviews where I told them I've been doing this for over 25 years and they're like "ok how do you show the list of files in this directory at the bash prompt"

I've had the "what the hell job are you hiring for?" response in my head many times

I've got no interest groveling my way up some kind of hierarchy to eventually get to a position I thought I was coming in to do in the first place.

This has turned out to be a perfectly acceptable shortcut.

You could say it's more like petitioning for a job as opposed to applying for one

Not GP, but I have and it worked. Pretty happy of the job I have, working of free software in a great environment.