Actually, that's not a half bad idea. If phone interview is passed, on-site time should be paid since the market is too hot. I wasted about 5 hours with Google (I did get an offer after the interview) but it was horrible experience (2019). Maybe if I was paid for that time I could at least justify this incredible time-waste. For example, companies do pay for people to fly-in for onsite interviews, so they do have budget for that.

UPD: I have provided negative feedback to my recruiter and they still reaching out to me. Really doubt companies ever act on any of candidate feedbacks since candidates are not employee (I know my previous company didn't, asking for feedback was just a "wanna look good in your eyes" question).

> "If phone interview is passed, on-site time should be paid since the market is too hot."

And what happens later when the market is not so hot? I was around for both the dot com bust and 2008 recession. The current hot market should not be taken for granted; it isn't going to last forever.

I bailed on a Google interview loop after the recruiter literally told me that they'd, "like to bring you in and put you through your paces". I'm no one's trained pony.

I'm not a huge fan of coding tests, but as a hiring manager, we do them during my team's interviews.

I'm not looking for a leetcoder. But I've had to reject candidates who otherwise seemed really strong, but then it turns out that they completely struggled with every aspect of a simple python question.

I've probably been involved with 500 interviews at this point, primarily as a technical screener. If a candidate is applying for a job that requires working with code in some capacity, it would be foolish not to test and quantify those skills. Someone that muddles through but has fun and learns something during a tough interview is more likely to progress through the pipeline than an "expert" with a chip on their shoulder. I've witnessed a handful of "highly experienced" candidates make it to the onsite interview stage and then epically botch it purely with their attitude when asked to actually solve a problem within a set of constraints (isn't that what engineering is?) In almost all those cases, there were subtle red flags the resume or earlier round of interviews, and the interview question was intentionally designed to dig into those flags.

The difference is that a candidate with a good attitude and growth potential is usually worth hiring even if they're not a fit for the role they applied for, and so the hiring manager will get creative trying to make something work.

Perhaps some of the well known tech companies don't put the same level of care into their interview pipelines, and then folk become jaded and irrational? Does anyone remember that Office episode where Ray Romano interviews for the manager position and talks about how all his old coworkers are jerks while eating a sandwich out of his briefcase?

What's an example of a 'simple python question that someone failed?' And was it something that truly showed incompetance?

In my experience, it turns out to be some dark corner of the language, or a keyword that's not in common use today. Examples are: 'void' in JavaScript and 'boxing' in C#