I agree with all you said. However, 99% of major tech companies employ exactly the same process of hiring software engineers. I've been on hundreds of interview

I agree with all you said. However, 99% of major tech companies employ exactly the same process of hiring software engineers. I've been on hundreds of interview loops and unfortunately just one bad interview in a loop of 5-6 could make the candidate look like a "bad" fit and thus receive no offer. That particular candidate might be in fact great fit, but the way he was tested could not reveal that. I don't know the solution to this problem. Eliminating tests whatsoever and just talking with the candidate about his experience and probing his knowledge on different topics is not efficient either. There are a lot of talking heads around who when given a simple task fail miserably. We as a tech community need to come up with better ways to assess other people's competency while also making sure those people fit within our company's culture, work efficiently with others and after all create value. This is a hard problem. So, we try to simplify the problem by imposing the "proven" way of finding such people -- give them arbitrary tests and hope they pass them.