Has hiring ever really worked, anywhere? Especially as roles and need evolve? I guess you could argue that it sort of did, apropos of a play I saw last night on the astronaut program--and maybe the military in many cases more broadly.

But, in many cases, I'm not sure how I, as a candidate for a tech job, would feel about a company offering me $200K--no strings attached--with the proviso that I statistically only had a 25% chance of making it through the next 6 months. (And is that really long enough anyway?)

There are tournament-style professions. But I'm not convinced most professional jobs are or should be among them in general.

My first startup did one interview per person and then a trial period, all good.

>Has hiring ever really worked, anywhere?

yes. Best place i worked at - we hired only by internal references and only people from our University. Up until the company grew around 200 people. We didn't do technical interviews, just a short talk. And we were among top employers, including salary-wise.