That said, I do think there is appeal for candidates in contracting for companies as a way to get to know the teams a bit better before deciding where to take a full-time offer. At least it's something I've been glad I've done at times, and wished I could have done at other times.
Plus, most developers are not the very best developers, and they won't have four competing offers after only a couple of weeks of job searching. For an awful lot of developers they'll need to spend hours prepping for interviews, working on take-home projects, going to onsites, and talking on the phone with hiring managers and recruiters. They spend a lot of time and effort for which they're not getting paid anything, and which is largely orthogonal to their actual work. When they do get a few offers they have to make a decision with limited knowledge of what working at each company will actually be like.
I dunno. I still think it would be awesome if job-seekers and hiring teams could get to know each other in some more natural and meaningful way than the feats of strength performed in today's interviews. Maybe temp-to-perm is too problematic though.