I never before experienced the kind of rudeness and incompetence during hiring I had encountered while being interviewed in the Bay Area tech scene. Interviewers not keeping phone appointments. Interviewers blatantly not listening. Interviewers basically (incorrectly) implying that I'm lying. I will observe that the YCombinator companies fared much better than the above, however. Much, much better!
They seemed very surprised when he laughed and told them they were too late, he'd got work elsewhere, as if they somehow expected him to sit around on his arse waiting for the job.
I'm curious to know the company if you're willing to share because I grew up in Bellevue and worked at a software company downtown there as well.
I can say having been on the hiring-side of various companies for a while, most East Coast companies can go from looking at an application to hire inside a couple of weeks if they're slow, inside of a week if they're pretty well put together and can get enough people for interviews. It just simply doesn't take 5 interviews and two months to find somebody -- that's just ineptitude...and those companies' own internal metrics show all the process and hoops don't make much difference in final employee performance.
Growth, promotions, raises and other perks will come in a trickle unless you are a member of some political cartel in the company, because every one thinks they are special.
Recruiting is worse of course, because they don't generally grant easy access to their elite club.