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Comment by roarcher | Hacker News Reader

> You are going to potentially spend a major portion of your life there - so it isn't that weird to set aside a full day to get to know them.

Right, but you're not just doing it with them, you're potentially doing it with lots of companies you're applying to. It would be untenable to devote that much time to every prospect. Oxide can only do it because most other companies don't.

There are lots of axes on which to judge a company so I wouldn't write off Oxide for this alone, but it doesn't speak well of their respect for their candidates' time.

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When I worked at Oxide, you only get to the interview part if you’re extremely close to an offer. Like, down to one or two candidates out of hundreds.

There's been several mentions of disrespecting the candidate's time in this conversation. Is the expected value of that time investment not worth it? You're trying to land a job. It seems like it would be, even if you have ten such companies.

If most companies take that much time before giving you a rejection or not, then job hunting would require quitting your current job to make sufficient time for it. With ten companies you’d need to organize something like 3-4 weeks of vacation.

That is worst possible outcome thinking.

If you consistently fail (or give up) at the very last interview, there's something rather wrong.

Your median/average should be better.

The reason companies have that many interview hours spread across multiple slots is that then have fallout over the funnel.

They don’t have every candidate scheduled for the entire time of all the rounds. If you don’t pass earlier rounds, they’re not going to waste time (yours and theirs) hauling you through more rounds of interviews.

If you make it to the end of all of those scheduled interviews, there’s probably a very good chance you’re getting an offer.

I understand that, but it's still possible to devote up to 9 hours to this and get nothing in return. And maybe not just possible, but likely. We don't know how eagerly their pipeline rejects candidates. Every candidate has to take that gamble.

9 hours just seems excessive. Other companies have "funnel" hiring processes like this and still manage to do it in 3 hours instead of 9.

You do know: we are telling you. We advance very few candidates to interviews and hire a surprisingly large proportion of those who interview. The written materials are the primary filter.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50021846

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50021016

Great, I'm glad to hear it.

> You do know

No, I did not know when I posted that comment. steveklabnik's comment was posted concurrently with mine, and I did not feel the need to scour the whole thread in case there happened to be an answer to this specific question from an Oxide employee. But thank you for the data point.

Sorry to come off a little abrupt!

No worries. It has actually always been my impression that Oxide does good work, even if I may think your hiring process is a bit on the onerous side. Keep up the good work!

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