There's an entire cosmos worth of chaos that decides whether you get the job or not, no matter how your interviews go.

Hiring panels are rarely unanimous and there are many cases where a single hire vs. pass decision drags on for weeks and weeks.

Any individual hiring decision is a random toss-up, and at the scale they are mostly determined by both skill and luck.

Extremely qualified people fail to contribute at bad workplaces, and candidates who appear as weak initially can excel at companies that help them grow and succeed.

The thought of interviewing for a tech job again would scare the crap out of me. I don't plan to work (for pay) in any technical field anymore, I had enough years of that.

Great article. I work and hire in tech now, but I've hired and interviewed in education, government, and other industries. It is almost always a crap shoot. As described some people interview great, then suck. Others suck at the interview, but do fine. And everything in between. I'm much more in favor now of probationary hiring. Everyone gets six months to figure out if this is working. Most of our probationary hires end up working out great, but we still have the ability to get out if we need to (and same for them).

Any individual hiring decision is a random toss-up, and at scale they are mostly determined by both skill and luck. This doesn't mean there's no objectivity in the system. There is. But whatever the tiny bit of objectivity, you can only observe it in aggregate.

That's why it's important to not just appeal to the skills and intellect part. You also need to have a good vibe with your potential managers/coworkers because truly, they can easily pass if they simply don't feel like you’re going to be a good fit (socially) for the team.

Looks like interviewing, at least in tech, is uniformly sucky all over the globe.