I agree with you its still heavily stacked, but I meant that at least there was some shot for her. If degrees got factored in up front, she probably won't even be interviewed vs that rich kid who had tutors and went to Stanford or wherever.

> she probably won't even be interviewed

Let's say that she does, which isn't certain btw. (it's still CV-check before interview, that fact didn't go away)...then what? She now has to compete by doing something that actually has little to do with the day-to-day job she's applying for, and is time consuming to prepare for.

So, in the limited time the Philly single mom has between her current job(s) and caring for her child(ren), she not only has to teach herself software engineering (aka. the job shes applying for), she now ALSO has to grind coding puzzles, which doesn't really help her getting good at what shes trying to do, and is just for the interview process.

Maybe she's actually a natural at programming. Maybe she worked her a** off teaching herself languages, frameworks, tooling, best practices. Maybe she even built some projects to showcase her skills, ready to present to recruiters on her github.

Oh but behold: code-puzzle interviews enter the ring, and suddenly, none of that may matter, because to even get to the part of the interview process where she can show how good she is at the actual job shes applying for, she now has to tackle that additional obstacle that she may not be as good at, and certainly didn't have the opportunity to devote as much resources to as the people who were already holding all the advantages before.

Let that sink in for a moment. It is now possible for the Philly single mom to be actually better at the job shes applying for, but losing the competition against a worse candidate, who used available resources to prepare well for the code interview, enabled by how predictable the evaluation process became.

So no, this method doesn't break down any walls. If anything, it creates new ones.