FWIW I would never sit for any interview that was multi-tier over several hours. I'm fortunate in that I have a pretty good network and everyone in my network would hire me if they had a spot open. I haven't cold-interviewed since probably 2012 and that was on a whim for iPhone dev work (I had released 3 fairly successful but not life changing apps already). I ended the process when they wanted me to write code over Thanksgiving because I hadn't already written enough code to their satisfaction. That company is now out of business.
Oh, and my favorite one, a ‘pop-quiz’ take home test. They wouldn’t tell me what time they were sending it, and just suddenly sent it. I mean they told me what day, but they wouldn’t say what time. So I had to sit around and just wait for hours and ‘bam’ there was the email with a time limit given.
Can’t make this shit up. There’s truly something uniquely douchey about tech hiring that I can’t exactly put my finger on. It’s either some tacky attempt by startups, or in a similar vein, a tacky attempt by larger orgs. Douchey is the only word that comes to mind.
Only people deeply interested in computing did. They gravitated toward it, it was fun, they had an aptitude for it.
These days, people enter the field for cash, or because they are mildly interested and it is the best option, out of other mildly interesting things.
There is a vast difference between these two classes of candidates. Note, I am not saying that there are no younger employees that fit #1, but merely that they are far outnumbered by those barely able to perform the job.
Everyone was self taught in the day, when I started there was no internet to help me, and places like stack overflow came much, much later.
If something didn't work, I had to figure it out, no one could help. I had to look at sources, read entire books, learn how to debug, learn debugging tools, etc, etc.
Meanwhile, most modern candidates want cash cash cash, and if you ask them use your tool chain, they're pissed.
On top of that, I have seen endless candidates come out of College with zero ability for analytical thinking. It's only rote work for them.
Without frameworks, sql abstraction, and 100 other crutches, a rote worker cannot do this work.
This, I think, is why modern interview processes are so absurd. There's good money now, so naturally everyone wants the job.
This leads to the follow up, which is that rote workers are now looking to hire other rote workers. And thus, a rote workers do, they ape other company's processes.
They try to hire like google, even thought they are tiny in size, or, even though the type of work is different.