Look, if you spend five years with a girl, you’ve gotta marry her. Clearly, you didn’t find anything wrong with her enough to break up and she can’t wait around forever. Are there better women out there? Almost definitely. They didn’t just commit five years to your chubby ass though.
Likewise, once you make someone put 4+ hours into tech work and it’s good work, you’d better hire them or apologize profusely for wasting their time.
The company is only going hire one person. If they make ten people do their task, they've committed themselves to wasting the time and energy of all at least nine of those people, even if all ten people do something amazing with that assignment.
You should be looking at one woman over those five years.
For companies, you are probably looking at multiple developers and if you do only have one opening then even if more than one is good there is going to be a best.
Likewise, once you make someone put 4+ hours into tech work and it’s good work, you’d better hire them or apologize profusely for wasting their time.