A shortage of talent does not equal a shortage of applicants. I did a lot of phone screening and in-person interviewing at Amazon and the experience was nothin

A shortage of talent does not equal a shortage of applicants. I did a lot of phone screening and in-person interviewing at Amazon and the experience was nothing short of shocking. Applicants with 5+ years of professional experience who couldn't solve Fizzbuzz or reverse a string. People who didn't know what a set was - I had one guy who claimed to have done a decade of GIS development state that "he never uses sets - he just uses maps for everything." I would not let the vast majority of them anywhere near a codebase that I even somewhat cared about. The filters are there for a very good reason. I think once a candidate meet a certain bar, the the process becomes somewhat arbitrary, but most applicants I've seen - where by "most" I mean 95/100 phone screens - don't come anywhere NEAR that bar.