Much of it has been based on networking for a good 20+ years. Yes, there was a certain if you have a pulse era in tech at at a lot of companies--leet code notwithstanding though that was an issue--that has largely passed and a lot of people are reacting to tech hiring becoming a more normal multi-month process.

I told the last recruiter who had a six week interview process “I’m not waiting that long when I can literally clone your product in a weekend for $50