[tzs]

> I interview a lot of candidates. I just can't imagine to make a hiring decision for a dev, let alone a manager that manages other managers, based on 20 minute discussion.

But what if others in their 20 minute discussions with the candidate ask the questions you would have asked if you had spent longer interviewing them?

If the hiring decision is based on the feedback from all the interviewers I could see having many of those interviews be short interviews where the interviewer just concentrates on finding out one important input for the group decision working, provided that there are enough interviews to cover all the important things and if there has been some planning on the part of the company to coordinate who covers what in the 20 minute interviews.

I have no idea if Stripe does the necessary coordination to make that work, but the fact that several of the interviewers started out mentioning they would only need 20 minutes suggests that it was some sort of organized thing.

[lmilcin]

You are hiring somebody who will be managing managers meaning they will probably have responsibility for at least dozens if not hundreds or even thousands of people.

As a manager/leader of that organisation they will have an important role that can mean difference between those hundreds of people bringing huge value or huge loss to the company.

So your responsibility is to figure out how much time to spend with the candidate. You can choose anywhere between "just hire first person to apply" and "spend a year grooming an employee to see if they can do the job".

And you want to tell me that 20 minutes is the right answer here? That out of entire continuum of possible choices you say that the optimal return (performance of manager) on investment (cost of conducting interviews) lands at approximately 20 minutes -- less time than you take to have a lunch?

I get that he had couple of these sessions but still... it sounds like giving the job to a first person that looks the part.

[tzs]

What I'm suggesting is that maybe what matters is the total set of questions asked by all the interviewers. Does it really matter if one person asks questions for 2 hours as opposed to 6 people asking questions for 20 minutes each if the same questions are asked?

The former gives more flexibility to alter the questioning on the fly, such as to delve more deeply into some area than had been planned. The latter gets more people to spend time with the candidate.

A mix of this could be the best of both worlds. Have several short interviews mixed with some long ones. If one of the short ones turns up something that seems worth going in depth on that can be handled in one of the long interviews.