4-5 hours of interviews seems pretty standard even for companies you’ve never heard of. Nowadays every tech company pretends like they’re FAANG, and then they complain about how hard it is to hire new devs. As if the Leetcode rigamarole weren’t bad enough every company expects you to do 7 interviews. Finding a tech job is a full-time job in itself
My most recent FAANG job (this year) was a total of 3 interviews (~45 min each), plus an optional reach out from the hiring manager's boss who simply wanted to know if the process was going well and if I had any questions.
Add in a couple of convos with the internal recruiter and the negotiation session, and I was still under 3 hours over the course of a week or 2. Completely not unreasonable..
Even interviewing out of school way back when, 4 or 5 interviews seemed pretty normal for all sorts of different roles whether or not there was a phone screen/on-campus interview. And, of course, this was all in-person so you're probably talking a couple days especially if you consider some modicum of research about the company. More recently, aside from a very small company, the few interviews I've had it's been a fairly standard 4 interviews or so panel after whatever initial contacts I had with people I knew.
When is "way back when?" 2007-2011, the interview consisted of one or two hours in person on location. That's it. 20 minutes with HR, 20 minutes with the hiring manager, 20 minutes at the whiteboard, 20 minutes with a VP/CTO/CEO and you were done. Segments were often ended early because you were taking up a conference room, so there was an incentive to keep things brief and at a brisk pace.
I'm not saying the in-person experience was superior or inferior to how it is now, but it was considerate of everybody's time.
