Imagine there are twenty candidates who can't code at all, so they apply everywhere. There are also twenty candidates who can code, but are presently unemployed because they all worked for SpoonRacket.
Now the entire lot apply for jobs at your company, and you hire two of those who can code. Within 3 months the rest of the good ones have found jobs, but 30 others have temporarily been unemployed and none of the bad ones have been unemployed.
So you interview again and roughly 40% of the programmers you interview can't code. But that doesn't mean that even 5% of the programmers out there can't code, it just means it is the same bad programmers that interview in lots of places.
It is the same when employers say they are getting ten or twenty job applications for every open position - that doesn't mean anything because everybody who is unemployed applies to more than one place, but from only one side of the fence it sure looks like that.
Yeah, lots of people who are not amazing applying and having to be filtered is a key challenge for anyone trying to hire at scale. In fact the key issue that this question is intended to address, so I agree with you.
I would never want to suggest that 'most programmers are bad' or anything like that, i think the real issue is that people who are not really great programmers apply for jobs that are beyond their level of skill at the time of their application.
Now the entire lot apply for jobs at your company, and you hire two of those who can code. Within 3 months the rest of the good ones have found jobs, but 30 others have temporarily been unemployed and none of the bad ones have been unemployed.
So you interview again and roughly 40% of the programmers you interview can't code. But that doesn't mean that even 5% of the programmers out there can't code, it just means it is the same bad programmers that interview in lots of places.
It is the same when employers say they are getting ten or twenty job applications for every open position - that doesn't mean anything because everybody who is unemployed applies to more than one place, but from only one side of the fence it sure looks like that.