[nonchalance]

The biggest waste of time is that candidates have to demonstrate general competency to every company he or she is considering. It's a waste of engineering resources checking every candidate and a waste of time for the candidates. Is there a way to unify that across companies (other than by creating a certification scheme)? Is there a way to standardize the code sample procedure?

[rhizome]

Most, if not all, of these companies do not articulate what "the bar" is that candidates have to meet, or at least do not do so publicly or as part of the job req, so no, I don't think there is currently a way to unify that across companies. "The bar" is largely a euphemism for an information asymmetry in a company's hiring.

[bonemachine]

Basically "the bar" stands more as an internal psychological mechanism than for any set of objective criteria. More about providing frustrated to feel good about themselves -- "we're soooo selective, that's why we can't find engineers that don't suck" -- rather than actually sit down and think about what what they might be doing wrong in their hiring process... or (probing further) why their company may not be doing anything all that interest in the first place.

As if, you know, the candidates don't also have a "bar" that companies have to muster up to. Yet if a candidate where to write a blog post musing that "only 1 in 100 qualified meet my bar", you probably wouldn't want to work with them.