This is an important point that people defending the author need to consider. I agree that hiring is a two-way negotiation. Flexibility is great. But there is a significant moral (and legal!) hazard when you let some people skip the code test because they have an amazing Github and others get rejected for not passing the screen. You're filtering out everyone who isn't privileged with the free time to build up an amazing portfolio. People will argue that this disproportionately hurts minorities, women, and lower income people.
The recruitment process is not the place to address economic inequality.
This is really important. For any company that does business with the federal government (even if it's only a small part of the company), they're required to keep records to prove that they don't discriminate in their hiring practices. The way almost every company does this is ensure that their practices are standardized and no candidate has any sort of different experience.
If they let this candidate have a non-standard interview, then hire them over someone who is in a protected class, they'd be opening up a TON of liability.