It’s a different ballgame when you can gamble $20k to make $1M.
Otoh, if you hire me to frame a house, it'll be objectively clear you need to get rid of me in the first hour, if not the first ten minutes. I don't know how I'd get past a screening for that either, but still.
Personally I don’t agree with the crazy tech interviews at all, no other job on the planet does it like this, even high skill jobs like doctors or professors. They hire based on your experience, your references, and a good chat to make sure you’d be a culture fit. If there’s a serious problem with a doctor once they start the job, they’d be let go, but they’re professionals so this isn’t a super common occurrence.
The exact same process could be taken with developers IMO. If I have a seasoned career, you should hire me based on that, not because I jumped through hoops you set up.
* to the company the cost of a false positive (bad hire) is very very much higher than the cost of a false negative (passing on a good candidate).
* AI companies have a large pool of strong candidates to interview
* Therefore they are incentivized to make their interview process hard enough that a poor candidate almost never passes it
* but then it becomes something a strong candidate can only pass with a bit of good luck
This is not “fair”, but it’s a marketplace. The best approach is the one you propose: accept it and don’t take it personally if you miss, roll the dice again.