12 people! What were they interviewing you for, a role as the code messiah?

This was spread out over three days: one phone screen and two separate days of in-person interviews. It wasn't even for a really amazing job (we're not talking FAANG here). You know - because we're in such high demand?

Truly the code messiah. He rose after three days of interviews.

That does seem unusual. Who does 2 days of onsite interviews for an engineering job?

After all that, they didn't offer me a job - I figured bringing me back for a second round of interviewing must be a formality but nope, they never called back.

The also do bar raiser rounds on top of those 12 rounds.

That's not that unusual. 15 minute recruiter screen -> 1 hour tech screen -> 5 hour onsite (5 parts w/ 2 devs each) can do it.

I've probably exceeded 20 before if you count lunch and meeting VPs/directors toward the end.

I still don't get it tbh. Our interview process is 3-4 1 hour talks at most - introduction / initial interview (phone or face to face) with 1-2 people (manager / HR), technical interview / code review (2 people), then a final chat with the CEO and finally a contract offer / negotiation. People can have a signed contract within a day. And we are actually very demanding of our people.

>> And we are actually very demanding of our people.

That explains it. If the job is hard, people just faffling around don't even bother to apply.

You need 12 adversarial grilling rounds of interviews so that you can hire what you claim to be the best and put them to build JSONs.

That sounds close to a dozen people involved in the process if teams double up on the 1 hour sessions.