Or you hire people you know. Which isn't perfect, has it's own set of problems, and doesn't scale. But I can't really complain given it's how I've gotten every job (just a few) after grad school and my interviews have been mostly perfunctory.
Here on the other side of the FAANG spectrum working with and for other independent contractors and various small (5-20ish devs) consultancies, I'd say that hiring based on who you know and you your peers recomend is far and away the primary way work is done.
The good news is, it's a very open network. We have a highly active Meetup scene, pretty regular public hackathons, annual small software conferences and un-conferences, and coworking spaces are (well were) packed.
For the most part this has worked, people new to the community are able to find jobs and the people hiring them know what hey are getting. But also like you say, this doesn't really scale to larger operations.
I'll accept the statement. But I will say that hiring from a network is at least a very different thing from hiring through a grueling set of often artificial interview hoops. It requires a potential candidate to have genuinely interacted at a higher than superficial level with a lot of people in a professional capacity. Which may not be harder than "leet code" but is certainly very different.
And yes, all the big companies have referral programs but that's mostly just a very rough first pass as a lot of referrals are basically I'm connected with this candidate on linked in. Referral bonus please.
