Yeah I think your last sentence nails the reverse issue here: The expectation from companies to put in excessive amounts of work which from all candidates when

Yeah I think your last sentence nails the reverse issue here: The expectation from companies to put in excessive amounts of work which from all candidates when most all of them will get no return on that effort (other than Experience™). My hope is that most of us are somewhere in the middle: Neither excessively applying to 60+ companies, nor being asked to do several days' worth of labor for a limited opportunity.