I’ve been through crappy perf review processes too... I agree with you, it can be dehumanizing, that’s a good word for it.

For new hires, I like to have an assigned mentor for the first year, it really helps ramp them up quicker, and have good material for performance reviews if necessary.

There’s nothing at all wrong with reviewing code and talking about it with the candidate/employee, that’s highly encouraged, and I do it constantly. I just can’t spend a lot of time looking at candidate’s portfolios without them being in the room, I don’t get enough information from it, and the information I do get might be misleading.