Panel interviews work like a jury trial these days. One holdout and you don't get the job. You meet about 3-5 people, and each one is assigned a piece of you to grade. One looks at your technical skills, one looks at how you work with a team, and so on. They score you on a rubric and then get together to compare notes. Companies love it because it feels fair. Everyone is grading on the same scale, and no single manager can just hire their buddy. But what most people don't know that is that at a lot of these companies the "yes" has to be unanimous, so four people can love you and one person can still prevent you from moving forward.

Stages of the modern day interview process: 1. June: "We're moving fast on this one" 2. July: "The hiring manager is on vacation" 3. August: "Just one more round with the VP" 4. September: "We're aligning internally" 5. October: "We've decided to move forward with other candidates" 6. November: the job is reposted

Things every job seeker experiences at least once: 1. Getting ghosted after the final round 2. A recruiter calling about a role you applied to six months ago 3. "Entry level, 5+ years required" 4. A take-home that takes the whole weekend 5. Getting rejected by the company that just posted about how hard it is to hire