The fundamental reason why this is OK is that the company is hoping to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the candidate's time. The person who pays the piper, gets to choose how it happens.
But that said, it is still fair. The effort required to hire a new person into a competent company is significantly greater than the effort it takes a competent person to get a new job. As a candidate it doesn't look like this because you see that you personally gave the company more attention than vice versa. However you don't see all of the other people who the company also paid attention to and ultimately rejected.
If you're a competent developer it probably still doesn't look like this because the company usually develops procedures that concentrate the required effort in the hiring manager and/or HR. Therefore you have little idea how much effort is actually spent looking for candidates.
But spend time as a hiring manager and it will be obvious.
The fundamental reason why this is OK is that the company is hoping to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for the candidate's time. The person who pays the piper, gets to choose how it happens.
But that said, it is still fair. The effort required to hire a new person into a competent company is significantly greater than the effort it takes a competent person to get a new job. As a candidate it doesn't look like this because you see that you personally gave the company more attention than vice versa. However you don't see all of the other people who the company also paid attention to and ultimately rejected.
If you're a competent developer it probably still doesn't look like this because the company usually develops procedures that concentrate the required effort in the hiring manager and/or HR. Therefore you have little idea how much effort is actually spent looking for candidates.
But spend time as a hiring manager and it will be obvious.