How To Hire Me (or any other programmer)

Cash, lots of cash!

I can't even begin to describe how worthless I think most coding interviews are.

Here's a contrived problem, that will never come up in our work. Now solve it by writing your code by hand without a compiler or any other tools that you would use in real life.

I understand that these questions are often about seeing how you think and how you solve problems. Throwing annoyances like writing code on a whiteboard into a high pressure situation doesn't help that at all.

As a coder, I couldn't agree more with the last paragraph (Let Me Code). Other than paring interview, I also like code submission. The company gives you a problem and couple of days and you write the code like you would in a real project. IMO, nothing reveals a developer's coding capability more than that.

Want to get my attention? Tell me you don't use email as a project management tool. Tell me you won't send me 5 emails a day. Tell me you don't want two status updates/meetings per day. Tell me you understand that the shotgun approach to adding features is stupid. Tell me that you don't randomly change features without any kind of data to back up the reason for making that change. Tell me you follow through on promises. Convince me you're not a fucking liar. Tell me you're offering benefits packages commensurate with your senior engineer position. After that, in addition to what OP said, I'll consider responding.

We've been working to solve this problem for a long time at https://workforpie.com/.

I completely agree with everything OP says, but I'll tell you what the real problem is: time. This is especially true in early stage startups and consultancies, where oftentimes the founders are still building stuff 95% of the time.

Recruiters are easy (as are, by the way, the new wave of non-recruiting recruiters like Developer Auction). Pay the man his money, and get a candidate in return. The founder doesn't have to spend time communicating with candidates or really doing any of the stuff OP mentions. That's why a lot of companies still hire recruiters. (Some of the companies) don't care what happens before the viable candidate walks thru the door, they just care that he/she does. It's like buying an iPad. Most of us don't think about, and don't care to think about what it took for that iPad to make it to us. We just care that it did and that it works as advertised.

Recruiting: the most important thing most companies don't have time for...

There's absolutely a better way, and in the end it's less time-consuming than what most companies do now. But the up front work is harder and more time-consuming. Convincing someone who's time is worth more than his money to adopt the better way is a hard thing to do.