Your approach doesn't save any time or effort for the hiring company though. It's the in depth interviews that take up so much time.
You may not like it but this is their motivator, not being nice
Sure if they don't know how to interview, they're going to waste their own time and still not get good candidates (or if they don't have much to offer as most companies don't). Our interviews were an initial phone screen of I think half an hour followed by an interview with the team for one hour followed by the take home test followed by another half hour to an hour interview to discuss the code and allow for further candidate questions. All interviews are conducted over a conference call with screen sharing for the code review.
You're right. I don't like it because what you're describing is generally how shitty companies operate. Often they won't even look at the coding test. Those companies deserve to get the worst of the worst candidates that they're optimizing for. They fit into the category above: nothing of value to offer the candidate.
The ideal is for the company and the candidate to have an equal investment in the process.
If I spend two hours coding some toy project, I expect the company to spend two hours talking to me. Either interviewing or constructive feedback relating to their rejection.
A company that wastes 1000 people's hours and then ghosts 990 of them should be embargoed by some kind of a computing and technology service workers' union. (You know... the folks who can herd CaTS.)
If the company feels justified in wasting a lot of your time in order to save a little of theirs, before the interviews even start, imagine what they will do after hiring.
You're right. I don't like it because what you're describing is generally how shitty companies operate. Often they won't even look at the coding test. Those companies deserve to get the worst of the worst candidates that they're optimizing for. They fit into the category above: nothing of value to offer the candidate.