This is exactly the solution I'm imagining. You do a take home after the initial soft screen(s) but prior to coming on-site. Onsite the focus is on the work you did for the take home--discussion like "why did you model X that way?", "if a new requirement Y was added, how would it impact the design", etc. And of course all the normal soft talk and cultural stuff. Just don't put them in front of a board and ask them to solve something under pressure, please.

I had that exactly experience with a start up and it was awesome! They also were very generous in the the time given to solve it (2w).

Ten people? 10?! I guess if it's really 5 slots with 2 interviewers (though that has its own set of disadvantages, on both sides), I guess. But, that just sounds like a distressingly long day.

It was, 5 meetings including lunch. Each meeting had at least 2 interviewers and I had lunch with my prospective manager and another senior peer.

  1. 2 pms - collab and project management questions.
  2. Trivia Q&A with 2 devs and tech projects
  3. Lunch with Dir. Eng, and senior dev.
  4. Whiteboard leetcode with A researcher and a junior dev.
  5. Systems design with Dir. Eng and a senior devops
  6. Chat sessionr for questions with VP of Eng.

Needles to say I was burn out on the systems interview after having been in interviewing mode all day and the interviewers were definitely mentally drained, nitpicking on a lot of low leve elements on a systems design task.