> I agree that excessive interviews are a warning sign, but that needs to be kept in perspective. 3-4 one hour interviews is almost standard practice in many locations and tech sectors.

For someone who comes to the company cold or in response to an advertised opening, sure.

If the firm is reaching out to a prospect, its not a random unknown applicant, and the filtering should be substantially less. If its not, its a sign of managerial dysfunction at the firm, which should be a negative signal to the prospect.

Hard disagree. Outside of famous FAANG companies, modern hiring is largely recruitment-driven. Either recruitment by the hiring managers, or by dedicated recruiters tasked with identifying potential candidates.

Asking everyone to go through the same interview process isn't a sign of dysfunction, it's a sign that the company has their act together and is making an effort to compare potential hires using the same framework.

Congratulations! You did a great job identifying what's wrong with hiring at tech. Everyone keeps saying hiring in tech is broken. Now you know why.

These days, FANG/MULA have dedicated recruitment teams actively reaching out to people too. Depending on the candidate's qualifications, the first round is sometimes dropped (this is sometimes called a "red carpet experience" and it's specifically designed for poaching) but the lengthier second round (of 4-5 sessions) is generally non-negotiable.

Really depends on the qualifications of the candidate. Cold calling on linkedin is very prevalent these days. Even FANG does skip to the second phase of an interview loop, but only in cases where the candidate has an outstanding resume and is worth going the extra mile to poach. But for run-off-the-mill jobs, no, standard funnel is standard practice because the recruitment team at the top of the funnel doesn't have the skills to evaluate candidates in depth and the tech interviewers at the end of the funnel usually have no idea where the candidate was sourced from.

> Even 4x2 hour interviews is still only the equivalent of a single workday.

It is crazy to me to casually drop that it's standard for a company to get a free day from someone they're interviewing and may just never contact again.

It's not a free day, by any means. The company is dedicating 2-3 times the hours of the interview, minimum. Determining a good fit is expensive.

On the other side, I've never heard of an interview where the candidate is given real work. Sure, they might ask about a problem the company has faced in the past, or is facing, but it's unlikely the response is used in any meaningful way, other than determining the candidates expertise and methodology for approach that type of problem.

> It's not a free day, by any means. The company is dedicating 2-3 times the hours of the interview, minimum.

How many hours of research, experience and interview prep is the candidate bringing to the table? When you can answer that, you can make a determination on whether the company is dedicating more or less than the potential hire.

imho, these interviews where you have to do weeks or months of prep, are focused on a candidates ability to learn familiar concepts and allow for easier comparison among candidates and consistency over time.

That being said, for non FAANG style interviews, prep shouldn't significant. That being said, I'm agreeable to accepting both parties have a sunk cost and no interest in wasting their own, or the other party's time.

The relative cost to the interviewee and the employer aren't really comparable.

The company isn't going to drag someone through 4 separate interviews if they're not serious about hiring.

One of the reasons it's staggered is so the company or the candidate can end it early if it's not a good fit. Less time wasted this way.

Frankly, I'm kind of shocked by the resistance HN has to spending a couple hours interviewing with a company. You're going to spend several years of your life working with this company. Is it really a dealbreaker if they ask their candidates (included your future coworkers) to participate in a few extra hours of discussion and confirmation?

In the real world, I offer to schedule interviews on lunch breaks, before or after work, or on weekends if that works better for people. Practically speaking, most developers (especially WFH/remote) have zero problems finding time during the day for a 1-2 interview session. That's equivalent a long lunch break or a quick errand.

In practice, I've never had anyone decline an interview for lack of time and very few people ever take me up on my offer for flexible interview hours of their choosing. Most people are eager to get to talk to the company, hear about the job, and show the company what they can do.

> Even 4x2 hour interviews is still only the equivalent of a single workday.

How many software engineers are working "hard" or to the level of 4 long whiteboarding-style problems for all eight hours of their day?

In my experience, not many.

Likewise, those 1-2 hour interview sessions aren’t going to be hardcore coding from the second the timer starts until it ends. Some or even much of it will be two-way conversation and a chance for the candidate to get to know the team.

I'm beginning to wonder:

* how crazy some other company's interview loops are, if they really are coding every single one of those hours.

* if people on HN are actually on interview loops, assessing candidates.

That's a very subjective claim. For me personally I tend to get stressed out even on simpler problems.

The best two-way conversation at least for SDE interviews IMO is the systems design one because ideally it really is just a back-and-forth conversation.

"Even 4x2 hour interviews is still only the equivalent of a single workday."

So about $400 of labor?

Neither the prospective employee or employer get a good 'feel' of each other because both are giving 'performances' in a completely different context than actual work.

No one has any real, statistically valid and logically sound, data on hiring practices. It's all dogma & "intuition".

It's also worth keeping in mind that you will be working with other people who went through this same process. Maybe you're an awesome engineer who works well with teams. If the interview process isn't effective at proving that, though, then your co-workers might be bad engineers, have bad attitudes, or otherwise be poor team players. You might resent a little bit having to prove that you're a good hire, but understand what else would happen if they didn't.