>> Employers who make candidates jump through unnecessary hoops will filter out some of the unqualified people, sure, but they'll also filter out people who are qualified but have no interest in playing stupid games with their time.

It's worth noting that from an employer perspective missing some qualified people is not a problem (because they'll usually have plenty of qualified people applying for the post.) Whereas hiring an unqualified person is disastrous.

In other words given the choice of "reducing to a subset of all good" or "reducing to all good plus possibly a few bad" the goal is the former.

This can be galling if you are an "excluded good one", but its worth understanding this because being filtered out doesn't mean you're bad. (It might mean that, but not necessarily so.)

As to your main point, being compatible with your employer in terms of style (the interview works both ways) is important. Generally speaking the hiring process is often unrelated to the work process (for both sides of the table) so some discernment is necessary but I'm a big believer in "when someone shows you who there are, believe them".