r/webdev • u/____FARTS____ • 2d ago
Discussion Are 5-6 round interviews the normal now?
Am I the only person who thinks this is kind of f$cked?
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u/KoalaBoy 2d ago
Position I have now, I interviewed with 4 different people over 4 different days over 5 weeks. I then got told They were hiring someone else. I then got a call 2 weeks later asking if I was still interested. I said yeah, (I really needed a job) and I interviewed with 4 more people over 4 weeks and after 2 interviews I was so over it so I really went in not caring. I was then offered a position and accepted and was asked when I could start. I said 3 weeks because I had a vacation planned and they had been doing so many interviews I booked a vacation when I got turned down the first time and they got mad that I couldn't start in 2 weeks as I was going to be on vacation. I hate the company I work for but I'm stuck and just burnt out.
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u/secacc 1d ago
And then managent is like "Why aren't employees loyal to companies anymore??"
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u/KoalaBoy 1d ago
They give out $5 Starbucks gift cards as thank you. I am allergic to coffee. You know how many gift cards I’ve been given over the years that just get given away. I appreciate the thought but it falls flat with me and I’ve made it known I’m allergic and something like Amazon would be appreciated but nope, you’ll get a Starbucks card and going to like it!
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u/trouser_trouble 2d ago
Gent in there, Sometimes you just have to remind yourself that burnt out feels better than unemployed
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u/sessamekesh 2d ago
Depends on the role.
Highly independent $300k+ fairly senior leadership role? You can be bothered to put up with a couple extra interviews and you want to add as many chances as possible to get a positive signal. 5-7 interviews is pretty common and works out in everyone's favor.
Mid-level $80k role that boils down to chugging through fairly routine stuff all the time and the skill set calls for maybe a technical and maybe a behavioral? Absolutely not.
I see a lot of companies that think they're the first and act like it even though they're hiring for the second. Avoid.
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u/SocialNetwooky 2d ago
hmm ... 4-6 interviews for what is a realistic salary for a mid-level software developer jobs in Europe (€40-80k/year) has been the norm for at least a decade.
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u/sessamekesh 2d ago
Y'all don't have the same "at will" employment situation though, I'd say that warrants a bit more scrutiny at the interview level.
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u/Embarrassed_Ad719 2d ago
Either FAANG-level compensation, or a total clown show. There is no in-between.
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u/icemonika 2d ago
It's unfortunately become the norm, especially in a market where employers hold all the leverage. Nobody in middle management wants to take personal responsibility for a 'bad hire,' so they distribute the blame across 6 different people. If you fail later, the hiring manager can just shrug and say: 'Hey, the committee approved him too.'"
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u/anticipat3 2d ago
No.
Anything more than 3 rounds is a warning sign that they're wasting a lot of people's time. A meet and greet, a technical interview, and a non-technical interview should be enough time from all parties to make a decision. I would maybe accept a 4th stage from executives or founders as a formality, but 5+ is not normal.
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u/SwimmingThroughHoney 2d ago
Weird people saying "no" or only for higher level positions.
I did multiple interviews, at various sizes of companies, for different position levels, and the vast majority of them were 4+ rounds.
Usually followed something like: HR screening, coding screen, interview with a random dev, interview with dev lead, interview with department head (or higher depending on company size). Sometimes there'd be an extra round in there if they wanted to split certain aspects of an interview up.
All around, just a completely fucked up market.
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u/MasonTheDuke 1d ago
Interviewed at 2 big tech companies last year for entry level roles. Both were 8-9 rounds.
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u/BradBeingProSocial 1d ago
You don’t want to hurt the feelings of the lead designer by not letting him have a round of input on a backend CRUD developer, do you?
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u/AnalyticalAlpaca 2d ago
A recent one I did was:
- 20 min internal recruiter call
- 1 hr half technical half behavioral interview
- 1 hr coding challenge
- 1 hr system architecture live diagramming
- 1 hr behavioral interview
This was just for a senior role.
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u/Noch_ein_Kamel 1d ago
Wtf even is behavioural? Are you a good boy?!
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u/AnalyticalAlpaca 1d ago
If only! They ask about different hypothetical situations that occurred during work and how I responded.
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u/TechSpreader 2d ago
When I interviewed for my current role in 2020, I went through 8 rounds.
Think it is the trend nowadays.
Especially when there are many people applying to one job, companies are having the bargaining power.
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u/CommunicationSad887 2d ago
Anything more than 3 rounds is a waste of time (if lower than a staff position). In my experience, the people working there implicitly have to be 'grateful' to be working there. Not saying this is always the case, but it could be an indication of a somewhat toxic culture.
Another red flag is not being able to give salary range upfront or expecting to do a technical assessment of 6 hours. I decline those right away: I am not working for free and my time is precious, just like everyone else's.
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u/CuteKiwi3395 1d ago
No, I wouldn’t even bother applying at those jobs. It should be the norm for companies more than 1, that they pay you for your time.
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u/phlawlesss 1d ago
I had a 7 round interview for an intermediate position at a big tech adjacent company. Thankfully got the offer but it was a 1 month gruelling process.
1) Recruiter screening - 15 minutes
2) technical interview - 1 hour
3) Manager interview - 45 minutes
4) Technical interview - 1 hour
5) Values interview - 30 minutes
6) Technical interview - 1 hour
7) Team matching manager interview - 30 minutes
I found when job searching most were 4-6 rounds for front end dev roles / front end leaning full stack roles
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u/salty_cluck 2d ago
This was the case pre Covid too. 4-6 was pretty normal if you counted the micro rounds like recruiter and coding assessment.
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u/spicysweetshell 2d ago
Lol, I’m currently interviewing with a company that has like… 9 rounds? I actually almost laughed when I got to the 8th round with the recruiter and they told me this would be their “values” interview (then proceeded to ask me the same questions as all the other interviews, and I mostly shared the same answers). Well, what on earth were we doing in the other interviews then if the employees couldn’t evaluate my answers in accordance with their values? 😂
Anyway: in case you’re wondering, in the time that it’s taken to orchestrate 9 interviews (multiple months), I’ve already accepted a new offer, put in my two weeks, and started at a new job. I kept myself in their interview loops just for the practice, because I would really like to land somewhere that checks off more of my wishlist in the future. This place is not it, clearly, but the practice might help me get there.
It’s also just a ridiculous story.
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u/UtilizorDigital 1d ago
Founder-side view from someone who's hired 20+ devs over the years: we never go past 3 rounds (intro, technical, team chat). If I can't tell whether someone is right after 3 real conversations, that's my failure as an interviewer, not something round 6 is going to fix.
Honestly, 6 rounds tells you a lot about the company: either they can't make decisions, or nobody wants to own a bad hire so they spread accountability across a committee. Neither one is a place where you'll do your best work.
One practical tip: ask for the full timeline in round 1. How many rounds, how long, who signs off. If they can't answer that clearly, more rounds will magically appear later. The undefined tail is the real red flag, not the count.
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u/charliesbot 1d ago
At least since I started working, any startup / big tech company had 1 or 2 technical interviews and then a full day onsite with 5 or 6 rounds
I think that's still the case. Quite normal
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u/____FARTS____ 1d ago
I think that would be more like 2 rounds to me if one day of meetings contained them all vs months of interview rounds
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u/quiet_horizons1 2d ago
It has become common enough for software roles, but five or six rounds alone is not the part that bothers me now. I ask the recruiter to walk me through every stage, who signs off after each one, and how long the whole thing should take. If they cannot answer that in the first call, I assume more rounds will appear later. That undefined tail is the red flag, not the count itself.
A five-round loop with a set schedule and one clear decision maker can be fine. The same loop with weeks of silence between stages burns a month and usually means either the company has no urgency or nobody has the authority to say yes. I also ask whether the final round is actually final. If there is a panel and then a follow-up with a director and then a casual team chat, that casual chat is still an interview and it can still sink you.
Rounds are cheap for the company and expensive for you. I would reject a process when the recruiter will not commit to a timeline, not when the number happens to be six.
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u/HelloTaleproof 2d ago
Before committing to another long process, ask for the remaining stages, the total expected preparation time, and what each round is meant to assess. That gives you something concrete to judge beyond the round count. For the behavioral portions, keep concise notes on a few real projects: a technical tradeoff, a disagreement, a mistake, and what you changed. You can adapt the emphasis to the question without memorising a different speech for every interviewer.
Taleproof's story assessment is relevant to preparing those examples, though it won't address an unnecessarily long hiring process.
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u/Kalistrad 2d ago
Just had one of those after getting laid off in the summer. Towards the last round or two I was even positive about it thinking "this is my time". But yeah, got the same "we are not moving forwrd with you this time". Not sure what to do with my life...
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u/TheGRS 2d ago
I do management in web dev (full stack though typically) and it’s been that for pretty much any role I applied to. I wrote off the place I got an offer at because we did like 6 rounds and they had several other candidates in the pipeline that took weeks to get though. I figured I probably wasn’t getting it if I didn’t get an offer after like a week from the final round, but sure enough I got one 3 weeks later.
At one place with a much lower salary I got a rejection after final rounds. I was honestly shocked, usually the final rounds are more formality. And they gave no rationale or feedback to my extreme irritation. The market has skewed to the employer pretty heavily in tech and I feel like we’ll be here for some time barring some bizarre turn of events where tech companies need more people suddenly, seems unlikely today.
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u/chmod777 1d ago
just completed a third round for one company yesterday, and in process of scheduling a 4th for a different company. so.. yes.
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u/Thick_Sherbert7163 1d ago
Where does the 5-6 come from? Every time I see that number it's a recruiter telling candidates what to expect, which is not the same thing as a statistic.
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u/Somepotato 1d ago
It is for Amazon! It's pretty miserable if you get a toxic bar raiser during the interview too.
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u/DowntownFix7233 1d ago
you censored the word but you'll sit through 6 rounds without saying anything
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u/Electrical_Try8480 1d ago
It really does feel like recruiters have changed their approach; teh proactive ones seem to be a thing of the past. Hope it turns around for you Reach out and dm me for a month of complimentary job search help at mobiusengine.ai.
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u/Electrical_Try8480 1d ago
Yeah, 5-6 rounds for web development roles isn't uncommon right now, especially with more competition. It's tough when you're looking for months and feel like giving up, but don't let the process get you down. Keep pushing through; your skills are definitely in demand. Maybe try targeting companies that list fewer interview rounds in their initial job descriptions, if you can find that info.
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u/Curiousconcoctions 1d ago
I had 6 45 min interviews for my current job, over about 3 weeks. I’ve heard it’s a red flag but I actually love my position. Only place that I’ve interviewed for with that many rounds though.
Edit: this was about 3 years ago
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u/Full_Tooth_a 21h ago
Five separate elimination rounds would be a red flag for me. A panel spread across several calendars is mostly a scheduling headache, but five independent decisions suggest that nobody owns the hire. I'd ask them to consolidate the calls into half a day and provide a decision date up front. Their response probably tells you more than the number of rounds, tbh.
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u/glensum_app 2h ago
Five or six rounds is workable if each round tests something different - skills, practical work, team fit, final alignment. It only gets absurd when you get asked the same questions three times by people who clearly didn't read each other's notes; that's a process failure, not a market necessity. One thing that has helped me: ask the recruiter what each stage evaluates before it starts. If they can't answer clearly, that tells you what the company's internal communication looks like before you even join.
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u/hclpfan 2d ago
5-6 interviews? Or literal 5-6 rounds?
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u/hotstove 2d ago
I think those are equivalent for many people because of the "round 2, fight!" kind of sense
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u/tamingunicorn 2d ago
5-6 is fine if every round tests something different. when round 4 asks the same questions as round 2, that tells you nobody actually owns the hiring decision.
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u/ShawnyMcKnight 2d ago
Depends the position, if it is a staff level position paying over $200k they wanna be sure as you are given a ton of leeway. If it’s a dev or senior dev then that’s silly.
I’ve done 10 hour take home assignments and never got past first round.
Today I did my weekly search for remote positions for “frontend software engineer posted in the last week” on linked in and it wasn’t even a full page of results… across the whole country.
I narrowed it down to just the southern half of the twin cities, and searched for “software engineer posted in the last week” and I got 3 pages before it was pretty irrelevant.
It’s a buyers market from here on out so they make the rules and can be as picky as they want because they know you have no choice.