We have lost candidates at my company which we had pretty much already decided were a fit after 1-2 interviews but we're still forced to go through the rigmarole of these extra interviews over several weeks. It's not just crazy it's also a waste of time and resources.
I was interviewing with a company a year back. I had gone through 3 interviews and there were 2 more left of various song and dance required. The process was going well and I liked the company, but I was getting burnt out with the process across all my other interviews and I had received 2 other job offers that were good, so I just sent an email to the company that I was going to withdraw myself from consideration.
I ended up getting an email from the team within minutes asking for a zoom where they literally begged me to keep going because they liked me the best of all the other candidates but are forced to have me go through the other interviews. They tried to get an exception for not doing the other interviews. They ended up being allowed to have only one more interview and they said that they could have an offer letter together within 24 hours of that interview. So I knew they were serious, but I was too tired and didnt love the bureaucracy of that place, so I just moved on.
I've lost out on numerous jobs after the 5 interview mark, often only receiving an automated "thanks for your interest". In one case it was multiple consecutive shorter interviews with random people on the team, after a take home assignment, etc.. it's incredibly defeating.
And how many of these company's core source of value is "we have a web page". I hope that having a bunch of unemployed developers out there will disrupt things. I suppose either way wages are going down though.
