> There exist many engineers in the world who either a) cannot cold email $DESIRABLE_SOFTWARE_COMPANY and be guaranteed of an interview, b) do not believe they can cold email $DESIRABLE_SOFTWARE_COMPANY and be guaranteed of an interview, or c) are not comfortable executing on the process of emailing $DESIRABLE_SOFTWARE_COMPANY and getting an interview.

And, it seems to me, the traits involved in doing those things are also not what a lot of companies intend to be looking for in hiring developers, so its in companies interests to find a way to adapt hiring so as not to implicitly bias it in that direction (if they were hiring people for sales position, that bias might be exactly what they want...)