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I work with a small Django team as part of a bigger organization. Our hiring process is pretty simple: we send the candidates a specification (that actually happens to be one of our open tickets!) and they build a simple Django app around it. Currently the specification is a simple inventory tracking system, complete with some anonymised (and inconsistent) data to import from a spreadsheet.

That, a phone interview and an hour-long face to face interview is all we need to figure out if the candidate is a good fit. The programming exercise can be done in good time by the candidate, using their tools and with no pressure. The resulting code is a great indication of how well they know Python and Django and gives us a lot to talk about in the face to face interview.

I'm not sure why some companies need a gruelling 4+ hour interrogation style interview process. Asking someone to code on a whiteboard would be as uncomfortable for me as it would be for them.

Why? There are so many candidates to chose from they might as well scare off people who don't want to do that for a job.
Lack of feedback is indeed the biggest problem with interviewing. I've been through interviews that I absolutely aced, followed by complete silence. It's probably a legal thing.

Keep in mind that it's not all about your coding ability, it could have been your smell, arrogance, the way you talk, etc (not saying any of it actually applies to the author, these are just examples).

Previous discussion thread https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11579757
Haha I can't even imagine the hubris necessary to claim that one would rather be homeless to do another interview at a technology company.

This post helps me sympathize with the angry SF-ians angry at all the techies.