I've thought this same thing. I've done interviewing for a small shop inside a big co., and I managed to have about an 90% hit rate and a strong percentage of excellent talent without doing ANY of this bullshit. No leetcode, no 7 interviews. HR screen, tech discussion, senior manager interview, done. It's not that hard to hire great people if you have the slightest inkling of what you're doing and HR and corporate processes don't dramatically get in your way.
This is where I'm ending up too. Word of mouth from people I trust is really the only way to go any more. Too many companies have dogshit cultures, and I'm happy where I am. Unless my current job suddenly goes downhill, why dance through this insane bullshit for some comp that will barely make me any happier?
I recently interviewed at <hot startup>, got past HR, then while prepping for the tech screen they told me "by the way if you get past this stage there will be FIVE technical interviews." It was almost a relief to fail the technical screen and realize I got back an entire day or two of my life.
At least they let you know pretty early on what you would have to go through to finish to process. It would have been better if they let you know before the HR interview, perhaps in the job posting, but now I'm getting into fantasy world even though it should be a reasonable thing to do.
