I think this is at the core of the problem. As the infamous CodingHorror post points out, an awful lot of programmers can't actually program. That means inter

I think this is at the core of the problem. As the infamous CodingHorror post points out, an awful lot of programmers can't actually program. That means interviews have to check for more than culture fit. It also drives extremely high selectivity, and when you know you'll be rejecting 90% of your applicants it becomes that much harder to give everyone a smooth and welcoming interview. Of course, none of this deals with the problem that (as Sahat found) many software interviews don't actually check for relevant skills. That's just stupid.