I think this makes it overly difficult to fully vet candidates. Like I wrote before, we have had long discussions with our current team about our hiring system and the feedback is overwhelmingly positive. We try to take care in the whole process and honestly, if someone feels what we are asking is too much, they don’t have to complete the interview. We explain the steps up front before anyone commits any time or “social capital” to our process.
If only people who agree to it make it through, then I'm not surprised the feedback is positive. What you're missing is all of the senior people who would never do this (which is a lot of them).
I'll also add that it's not hard to vet candidates. I've hired dozens and dozens of great people and never ask for references. Interviewing is a skill all managers should develop and excel at.
What is your take on "bad hires"? bitexploder said those are very difficult to deal with, but I'm not sure it has to be. If someone lied significantly during the interview and it came up later that's pretty easy to fire that person later.
I find that I don't get very many "bad" hires. It's pretty easy to tell if someone is a good developer or not. In the rare case that someone bad slips through, it's easy enough to fire them. That's only happened to me a couple of times though. It's not something I'd optimize for.
