I understand your sentiment, but, having been on the other side of the fence, there are a lot of people that apply for jobs they're completely unqualified for, and they end up being most of your candidate pool. (Come to think of it, this would make a decent whiteboard question about reservoir sampling without replacement...)
Another way to think about it is that these interview processes often have a ~ 1% acceptance rate, and the softball questions typically filter 80-90% of candidates.
So, yeah, it sucks for a qualified candidate if they fail half their interviews, but they'll end up getting a job somewhere. That's much better for them than working at a company where 99% of the engineers can't perform basic coding tasks or explain how products in their industry segment are designed.
I was thinking of a variant where there's a finite pool of candidates, and everyone is implementing a similar algorithm. Each time a candidate is hired from the pool, a candidate with IID skill level is put into the pool.
What does the average skill level in the pool converge to over time?
(This might be too hard for a whiteboard problem.)
Another way to think about it is that these interview processes often have a ~ 1% acceptance rate, and the softball questions typically filter 80-90% of candidates.
So, yeah, it sucks for a qualified candidate if they fail half their interviews, but they'll end up getting a job somewhere. That's much better for them than working at a company where 99% of the engineers can't perform basic coding tasks or explain how products in their industry segment are designed.