The onsite, frequently, has 3-5 interviews each an hour long.
On site is after the initial 1-2 rounds of screening.
I have not seen a single company hire with less than 4 rounds ever. Mostly, it's 5-8.
Sent two emails focused on the area I wanted to work:
Company A: - Email the next day to schedule first call - 15 minutes hr talk (mostly if salary, way of work, etc aligned) - 60 minutes vp of engineering (my experience, challenges the company is facing, talk shop) - 30 minutes with cto (they selling me on their company) - Offer after 2 hours of ending the chat with the cto.
All this in the span of 4 days (could have been faster but time conflicts)
Company B: - Email same day to schedule call - 15 call with recruiter (salary, expectations, etc) - 1:30 call with tech lead + someone else I forgot (talk about my experience, shop, and included a quick simple 20 minute coding challenge) - Offer the next day
Span of a week and a half since there were some holidays involved.
In 20+ years of being a developer, I only once had more than 3 interviews to get a job (Spotify almost a decade ago). Some are quick one hour chats, one was just having lunch with the CEO and CTO for an hour and chatting, Had 1-2 that were coding challenges and then 30 minutes chat.
I would never ever work for a company that required 5-8 interviews. Jesus christ
edit: At the company I am leaving, currently the process is:
- After initial email, first call with CEO to assess match, culture, etc - Interview with me for an hour. We do 2 small coding challenges (your own editor, you chose the language, get information before hand, etc).
If 2nd interview goes well, we put an offer, if it doesn't, we give an option of them doing a small take home (4h max, but we hope no-one does more than 2h) if they want to continue with the process. If this goes well, offer, if it doesn't, we may have another call to let them 'explain' their code and solutions. At this point, is either an offer or a no.
Yes, technically it can be 4 interviews, but they are mostly to give more 'opportunities' to folks that may not be as good in a type of interview vs another type.
Second round was the following week, four almost-back-to-back 45-minute sessions, each with a different person. The last was hiring manager's manager.
Third round was the following week, and was that manager's manger.
Offer came after that.
Oh, this was because of a personal referral, that might have eliminated a round?
In any case, I had three "rounds" but talked to six people.
You can twist this all you like, but that is not a functional organization.
As it happens, each interviewer focused on different things, by prior arrangement. One person walked me through a coding exercise, while another asked about mentorship and infra-team communication, while still another focused more on intra-team communication and process. Six interviews in, I was still being asked new and different questions than I'd gotten before, and I was still asking new and different questions than I'd asked before.
At the level I'm talking about, and given that I wasn't unemployed, the interview process is as much about me deciding whether I want to switch jobs as it is them deciding whether they want to hire me. I had different questions for each of the people I talked to, suited to their level, and even where some of my questions were the same, I got different answers from the people I talked to, again, based on their level. I couldn't very well probe the hiring manager about company focus in the same way I could the VP of Engineering, and in fact it was the higher-level employees that sold me on the job.
All in all, 4.5 hours is not a ton of time for them to get to know me, or for me to get to know them. Given the amount of money involved and the level of the position, the number of people I talked to seemed very restrained.
If someone that reports to you does an interview, and you then follow up by interviewing the same person, yes, that means exactly you don't trust your report's judgement. Of course they're going to have slightly different questions; they are different human beings.
I can't think of a clearer example of being unable to delegate than redoing your underling's work.
Another small company I am interviewing for, had a screening, a take home, discussion of the take home, and now a 3 round onsite.
All remote:
1 take-home code+essay test
1 technical discussion interview
2 management/consulting interviews (the role is pre-sales consultancy)
1 CEO interview which was essentially congratulatory, having passed the others