If you have to interview someone 6 times to quantify technical aptitude, don't hire that person. You shouldn't be on the fence after 5 interviewers.

Needing to check the technical aptitude of someone after 5 previous interviews means your interviewing process is broken, or you're trying to convince yourself that a weak candidate is good enough. Neither option is a ringing endorsement of decision making at the company.

I agree - but the decisions on the recruiting process is not on the team, assuming this is a mid-large sized company - that decision could be made miles away from the people interviewing you.

You can write them off based on this, but it's not pragmatic. Downside another hour of their life vs $$$ increase from the role. That 60 mins could be the difference between X00k!

I've experienced #1 before, when there should have been absolutely no doubt about my technical aptitude and the low level of questions asked confirmed they really didn't have a good grasp on what I could do. It turned out to me a big mistake to take that job, although it was at the beginning of the dot.com crash so I didn't think I could be very picky.

I’d recommend against opening salary negotiations before they settle on you. If they have two at this point relatively equal candidates your negotiating power is far lower.

Let's consider those.

> 1 - Uncertain about something about you (I imagine technical aptitude), and want to rule out their concern

They've already done live coding with you but they're not sure about your technical aptitude. So they're going to do more of the same thing that didn't work for them before. This says a lot about the company's habits.

> 2 - There are 2 close candidates

There are two close candidates. They're especially close in "live coding" ability. Let's have an async code-off! Why is live coding so important to the company? Is the other candidate going through this, too? Is the point of this really just to see which of you will swallow more BS? This also says a lot about how the company works.

Being on the fence is a good potential explanation. It could also be a quasi team selection thing. This is for a non technical role, but another team where I work put someone through all the normal rounds and then didn’t give them an offer but asked me if I wanted them on my team. Well, I wasn’t privy to that process so I need my own “round” and now this person has got an extra interview and it probably looks weird or bad for everyone but I ended up making her an offer and she accepted.

Sometimes leveling changes interview rounds. They could be considering upleveling or downleveling OP. OP should clarify that though.