There seems to be an attitude of "I had to go through this, so I don't see why new hires shouldn't" hidden under a thin layer of justifications but in fact we're playing a game with very limited information. We probably don't even have the tools to know if we're doing good or bad hires except in extreme cases. We almost certainly don't know if we're rejecting the wrong people. Still we pretend like it's working.

To me, it seems overly rigid, pattern-matching against a too-narrow idea of what a good developer/employee/team member is. So much could be improved by just adding some flexibility, but maybe we're afraid of losing the illusion of having a Process and Objective Criteria.

Maybe I'm naive, but aren't we looking for what people are good at and what they might bring to the table? Maybe someone likes programming puzzles and whiteboards, let them do it, but don't insist if it freaks another person out. Maybe someone else would rather do a take-home assignment, but don't insist on it if someone else don't have the will to do several hours of unpaid work. Others might prefer pair-programming in person, technical quizzes, Codility-style problem solving online, actual paid work on a project basis.