paid trial periods are still the best and lowest risk way for both parties to find out if they want to work together
biggest issue being people that are already employed somewhere else have a very tough time going through that process
Additionally.. there are tens of thousands of underpaid American software engineers. The wages for these software engineers only go up by moving companies, which makes retention a real bitch for CEOs who underpay their devs.
I am a recruiter with the proverbial 10,000 hours of interviews. Sam Altman for the win. They provide certain information but they are not predictive with any reliability - when did you learn this?