For one company, for a supposedly real principal-level technical position, I reluctantly did an early takehome ("architect this unusual thing"), and multiple live exercises, and they want another round of live exercises.
I told them I still have no idea what I'd be working on, nor who I'd be working with, and now we're burning a lot of time on (I put this more diplomatically) frat pledging rituals.
IMHO, a company can only get away with frat hazing, just to join them, team-unseen and work-unseen... if they are Google.
To be Google, a company has to pay 3x+ what they're currently offering in guaranteed TC, plus somehow gain 100x the prestige they are lacking, and also become widely known for treating employees well.
Sure, companies can still cargo-cult ZIRP-era nonsense interviews, but hiring today based on that nonsense -- when you might need to actually have a sustainable and viable business before investors can exit -- will help them to go out of business.
frankly, if an offer presented itself for $80k a year I'd take it (it's embarrassing but that's just where I am at the moment)
Agree with your points on networking being the only way. Interviewing is super broken right now.
My main point is that I would NOT be shocked if VP/CTO interviews still asked candidates to code on the whiteboard.
Seems like the interview pipeline is geared towards new grads and junior engineers and penalize senior and staff. At what point do I stop having to do these silly coding interviews?! At what point does my resume and 20 yrs of experience speak for itself? So called senior/staff interview loops are a joke with toy system design questions. What do you really learn asking “design twitter” 100 times?
The only answer I can come up with is networking. Basically, don’t bother interviewing. 4 of my last 5 jobs were via networking—no interviews.