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Comment by hiyer | Hacker News Reader

Almost every single tech company I've interviewed at (ranging from medium-sized startups to FAANG), I've given at least 5 interviews, going up to 7. The only exceptions were very small startups and a couple of large Chinese organizations, where they stopped at 3.

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I remember interviewing for some grad roles. No hackerrank, no bullshit, very straightforward companies with "easy processes". Both had one "interview day", and five/six interviews total.

I read your comment and I was thinking in my head...wow, five seems like a lot, and then I realised that even these places I liked went pretty hard...I think they call this conditioning.

I didn't get either job btw, the work was trivial but I get terrible interview nerves so tanked both of them...in both cases, I also had a 6-hour take home...the results of which were largely ignored. Neither company is ever fully staffed...ofc.

Interviews or rounds? Phone screen and 4-5 on-site is pretty reasonable, but that's only two rounds.

I'm not sure where the distinction lies - both seem same to me :-)

To me, rounds imply a decision point (and delay) in between.

If I talk to HR on Monday, take a phone screen with an engineer on Wednesday, and come on-site (or Zoom now) with 4 engineers next Monday, that’s 2 rounds and 5 interviews (or 3 and 6 if you count HR)

> To me, rounds imply a decision point (and delay) in between.

My experience has been that if you clear the engineering phone screen the company asks you to go through all the rest of the (4-6) interviews, even if your performance in one or more of them has been sub-par. And at least here in India the post-screen interviews are spread out over several days to 2-3 weeks - there is no "onsite" as such, even over Zoom.

And this is why the distinction is important. You could have an offer by Wednesday. That's a 10-day turnaround, and no one was stringing the other party along. When you consider scheduling, unless both parties are desperate, the process couldn't reasonably go much faster.

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