Background: I worked at Google for 5 years and did a bunch of interviewing for them.
I don't support skipping interviews even for good candidates, but if you were going to it would work the other way around -- you'd value recent accomplishments over more distant ones.
People don't understand that cutting out folks who had their name attached to some big successes but can't solve a toy problem in an interview is usually a really good thing. It's a strength of the system more often than a weakness. You wouldn't believe the number of senior candidates I interviewed who had really impressive resumes but were clearly checked out from doing real technical work -- folks who obviously no longer lived close to the code and either were very rusty or just no longer had the temperament to spend time thinking through a slightly tricky piece of code.
One of the reasons not to skip an interview for a candidate you're confident is good is that a good interview can be a great sales pitch to come work for your company.
I don't support skipping interviews even for good candidates, but if you were going to it would work the other way around -- you'd value recent accomplishments over more distant ones.
People don't understand that cutting out folks who had their name attached to some big successes but can't solve a toy problem in an interview is usually a really good thing. It's a strength of the system more often than a weakness. You wouldn't believe the number of senior candidates I interviewed who had really impressive resumes but were clearly checked out from doing real technical work -- folks who obviously no longer lived close to the code and either were very rusty or just no longer had the temperament to spend time thinking through a slightly tricky piece of code.
One of the reasons not to skip an interview for a candidate you're confident is good is that a good interview can be a great sales pitch to come work for your company.