This doesn't make sense. If "minimum bar" is your selection criteria and you're inundated with so many "good enough" candidates that you can't interview them all & it doesn't matter who you pick, you're overpaying. Why not drop your offers until you're selecting from a smaller pool?

I don't mean this hypothetically, I mean: isn't this what most companies actually do?

But in any case, what you're saying here is: "if the job has a large applicant ratio and you are unlikely to get hired, then I will use time spent as a filtering mechanism." The rational thing to do is to not apply to those positions (or spray & pray).

>This doesn't make sense. If "minimum bar" is your selection criteria

I think "minimum bar" refers to technical skills, not all selection criteria. It's perfectly sensible* to look at a larger pool with the minimum skills and select from the few with the right attitude and attention to detail.

That's not the same strategy as reducing the pool to the cheapest candidates regardless of their attitude, and isn't going to produce the same hiring decisions.

* even if it's not a universal strategy

You must be that rare unicorn that actually realizes their company isn't a future FAANG. A lot of consternation over hiring could be avoided if most companies realized they can get by just fine with average developers. But most people psychologically want to hire the "best" developer available and so would not be satisfied with "can do the job".