[bodge5000]

> These companies need a repeatable, trainable process that can scale reasonably well to thousands of interviewers and hundreds of thousands of applicants

This is sound logic, but it seems to only be a problem with SWE positions. I've done a few other jobs in the past, many of them very technical themselves (and around the same kind of pay, though perhaps not quite as high), and the interview process for those don't get anywhere near that of a SWE. At most, you might have some very high level technical talk, but most of the time its just a standard job interview as you'd expect for any other job.

Of course those positions do have a problem of hiring people who don't actually know how to do the job, but so does SWE. I wouldn't be able to tell you how much more effective SWE interviews are at picking the right person, but clearly its not enough of an issue for other positions to the point that interviews are having the change.