Absolutely.
The amount of times I’ve seen a “do you want to have a beer with them?” test in lieu of a simple programming exam is horrifying. (And it showed in the level of talent they hired.)
Fortunately, most of those have been left by the wayside, roadkill of history.
Because that is really the alternative if we don’t have rigorous, systematic technical interviews: cognitive bias and gut-feel decisions. Both of which are antithetical to high performing environments.
False choice.
The reality of these "rigorous, systematic technical interviews" is that we have a ton of companies doing nonsense theatre that isn't actually about "fundamentals", is also easily biased (as even some purported Google interviewers have admitted on HN), and have almost nothing to do with how effective a software engineer will be (as even Google's own stats show).
There is no alternative.
So you may not think they’re predictive of success, but you should see how much less predictive everything else is.
Hiring is always a risk. It will never be a perfect science.
That’s why it’s important to have a quick off-ramp for those who aren’t working out.
Edit: BTW, where did you see Google saying their interview process doesn’t work? Other than some a few anonymous devs venting on HN, the company still uses coding interviews as critical to their process. You will always find a few complainers, but the fact that one of the world’s top software shops still uses it says what needs to be said.
I've been doing this awhile, and I've seen hiring work really well without the LeetCode grilling.
And I've almost always seen the LeetCode grilling be administered by someone who doesn't know what they're doing (and often also tainted with ego, despite the strange claim of some that a LeetCode grilling is objective).
That said, if you're sourcing random people, good luck, it's a flood of LeetCode gamers to wade through, and too much of your staff interviewing them might also be LeetCode gamers with no experience doing non-LeetCode interviews.
> Edit: BTW, where did you see Google saying their interview process doesn’t work?
I have a bunch of notes on Google hiring I'd have to dig through, but the first link quick at hand is this retrospective by a hiring committee person who left (and I have a note about 8m50s being a funny story of the hiring committee realizing that they would've rejected their own packets): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8RxkpUvxK0 (IIRC, I don't agree with all the beliefs he still holds, but he calls out a lot of problems they found.)