Okay, so the original argument is about whether or not it's worth it to fly people out for an on-site. Hotel and airfare: $2000 absolute max. Salary at $100/hr for one month for me to figure out it's not going to work out, then pull the trigger to fire: $24,000.
I mean, being a manager is hard, but putting in the time and money to hire and then putting in the time to make sure your team doesn't have a morale drag, it's worth it.
The catch is that even in-person interviews are no panacea. I agree that it's worth the time to filter -- I wasn't really responding to that bit -- but from what I've seen, you have to be a very good interviewer not to get a bad hire every so often.
I often wonder how many hiring managers are actually good interviewers, in-person or not, but I digress...
Seeing the truly bad hires dragged along to the detriment of the rest of the team is a sore spot for me, though. It happens way too often in my experience.
I mean, being a manager is hard, but putting in the time and money to hire and then putting in the time to make sure your team doesn't have a morale drag, it's worth it.