I think this started with Microsoft and Google. Before Google, Microsoft was infamous for being one of the few places in tech having a 1 day interview. They flew you out to Seattle and gave you brain teasers. People realized the brain teasers didn't work and they just transformed into white board coding interviews. But that was just Microsoft. Then, Google came on the scenes and started paying more than Microsoft. I remember starting salaries jumping from 60K to 80K around 2004-2005. That was likely a direct result of Google. At the same time, Google copied the Microsoft hiring process, which was not the industry average to begin with. In fact, they made it harder. The whole ... hire people smarter than you crap started. The Google anti-interview loop was born (the hypothesis is that every employee at Google has a set of 5 people who, if they were on their interview loop, would reject the employee for their current job). People whose first jobs were around 2004 think this is the way it should be for everyone. And then, we are in our current situation where startups can't find anyone qualified to hire and job seekers find it impossible to get employed.

I think what this does is lower programmer mobility and encourage more people to do startups. I don't like the first result, but I do like the second.