If your company has 1k devs you'll have to hire several people every single week. At the same time if you want any level of consistency, you can't let teams who have not hired for 2 years come up with their own process, so that's why pipelines are a thing.

I assume most HN job posts are from small startups. Even if they are established companies with a sizable head count, it seems weird seeing the same exact job post month after month for a year or two straight.

> you can't let teams who have not hired for 2 years come up with their own process

Perhaps? We're a 9 person backend department inside a 250 person ISP. Not the typical type of team we talk about here on HN. I doubt small startups need a pipeline either, they just hire on demand.