I suspect he doesn't do much engineering, which would explain why he's impressed by candidates who can quickly churn out small rote sample projects with AI. Anyone who actually writes software for a living knows that working on a large production code base has little in common with this.

When I've had an open req for my team at a California tech company I've had days where I would interview (remotely) 2-3 candidates in a single day, several days a week for several weeks straight. It's not impossible to interview 100 people in a few months at that rate.

So... do you really think you were doing it right?

Sorry this is a little harsh, but how do you get anywhere near 100 people before realizing the approach must be horribly flawed, and devising and implementing a better one? Surely it behooves you to not waste your employer's time, your own time, and the time of all those people you're interviewing (mostly pointlessly).

These were 25 minute phone screens for candidates that had been sourced by recruiting, a few years ago at a company that was going through hyper-growth (hiring hundreds of engineers in a year). Phone screening several dozen people for 2-4 eventual hires doesn't feel too inefficient to me.

There are companies whose product is high-quality mock interviews. I wouldn't be surprised by that number of interviews in just a year and it can easily be more than one candidate per day.

Edit: there are also recruitment agencies with ex-engineers that do coding interviews, too.