People underestimate how much cultural baggage influences things.
I'll give a very simple example. I did a few SWE interviews in 2020, and several companies did the initial screen over the phone, and the on-site over Zoom.
In both cases it was a remote interview. There was no reason not to do both over Zoom. The only reason was that the previous process was a phone interview and then an in-person onsite, and they realized they had to replace the in-person on-site with Zoom, but they didn't think to replace the phone screen. If you started from scratch it makes no sense though.
In this case, the whole origin of the Leetcode interview is "we're going to hire the smartest people in the world.". You can dispute whether that was true back in 2009 but it was certainly part of Google / Facebook's messaging. Now, in 2024, I think it has morphed much closer to a standardized test, and even if people might begrudgingly admit that, there's still the cultural baggage remaining. If a company used a third-party service, they'd be admitted they're hiring standardized candidates rather than the smartest people in the world. Which might be an "unknown known" - things that everybody knows but nobody is allowed to admit.
I definitely agree that this industry, for all of its self-proclaimed freethinking and innovation, is rife with cultural baggage. Allowing for an independent standardized interview step would defy the not invented here syndrome that many leading corporations ascribe to, that their process is best. Not to mention reducing friction for applicants (by don't repeating your Leetcode stage) is inimical to employee retention incentives, that is preventing them from shopping around for new employers. So me saying that we oughta have a standardized test to save everybody's time is more wishful thinking than anything.
This is definitely a factor. "You don't understand, we have a really high bar and we only hire the best people" is a bit of a meme in recruiting circles because you will never ever ever ever not hear it on a call.
I don't think we found it a barrier to getting adoption from companies though - perhaps because "we're a really advanced company using this state of the art YC-backed assessment" satisfies that psychological need? Unclear.
> but it was certainly part of Google / Facebook's messaging.
It entered the online cultural zeitgeist before that, with Microsoft talking about their interview processes, and indeed early interview books were written targeting the MSFT hiring process that many other companies copied afterwards.
I graduated college in 2006 and some companies still did traditional interviews for software engineers (all soft skills, and personality tests, no real focus on technology, except maybe some buzzword questions), and then you had the insane all day interview loops from MSFT and Amazon.
Back then, Google famously only hired PhDs and people from Ivy Leagues, so us plebs didn't even bother to apply. In comparison, Microsoft would give almost everyone who applied from a CS program at least a call back and a phone screen.
I'll give a very simple example. I did a few SWE interviews in 2020, and several companies did the initial screen over the phone, and the on-site over Zoom.
In both cases it was a remote interview. There was no reason not to do both over Zoom. The only reason was that the previous process was a phone interview and then an in-person onsite, and they realized they had to replace the in-person on-site with Zoom, but they didn't think to replace the phone screen. If you started from scratch it makes no sense though.
In this case, the whole origin of the Leetcode interview is "we're going to hire the smartest people in the world.". You can dispute whether that was true back in 2009 but it was certainly part of Google / Facebook's messaging. Now, in 2024, I think it has morphed much closer to a standardized test, and even if people might begrudgingly admit that, there's still the cultural baggage remaining. If a company used a third-party service, they'd be admitted they're hiring standardized candidates rather than the smartest people in the world. Which might be an "unknown known" - things that everybody knows but nobody is allowed to admit.