[msluyter]

I think there's a lot of general recognition that the interview process is suboptimal, but it'll probably be slow to change at larger companies mostly out of inertia. Part of the problem is that developers tend to do most of the interviewing/phone-screening, and a lot of us don't like it and/or aren't very good at it. Thus, it's unlikely that we'll be willing to put much thought into improving the process (note, I have never had a performance goal related to interviewing). Usually, we just go with what we know, which is the standard white-boarding style interview.

That, and I wonder if there's a certain fraternity-like hazing element. One of our HR people recently brought up the possibility of removing one of our hiring steps (a take home programming assignment), and I found myself irrationally against the idea. I even joked that I wanted new candidates to suffer just like I did. On reflection, that might not have been a joke... Not particularly proud of it, but part of me resists changing the process because I did really well at it.