Exactly. People go like “the ideal way to interview is <whatever they themselves are the best at>”. Pair programming interviews suck and don’t scale, just like every other alternate way of hiring.

it isn't about scale. It is about core principle of the tech hiring - all the companies hire only the best. Not only it is impossible to scale, it is plain impossible. Even if all the companies hired only "above the average" it would still be a pretty tall order :)

IMO interviewing is the biggest bottleneck and if interviewing was decoupled from hiring then it wouldn't be a problem. But this requires a Guild-like organization to manage interviewing/vetting and for companies to use said Guild for hiring. The companies could then do a single team culture meeting (if they wanted) before hiring.

For companies that successfully scale their team size, it literally did scale, right? I think you mean that hiring is very difficult to scale.

Exactly. Its almost like optimising for finding your best possible match for marriage. You don't go over a billion prospects, you choose from the ones locally available to you, as they come.