[richthegeek]

I can imagine that works fine for fresh-out-of-university candidates but I can't imagine a time in my career where I could (and would want to) take 5 days PTO for a job interview.

FAANG-like hiring has the question "What info do you get from the 5th interview that you didn't already have after the 2nd?" - for the paid trial, what info do you get by Friday that you didn't have by the end of Monday?

[KerryJones]

I agree it's much harder with someone further in their career (and we worked with candidates to figure out what made sense, either shortening the trial, allowing other time to be included, etc.)

To answer your last question.

On Monday, it was had to fully tell how someone interacted with the team (there was a particular incident where a candidate ended pushing some extremely strong politics on the rest of the team on Wednesday). I was okay with it (I think people should be okay to express opinions), but the rest of the team was not -- and I value the rest of my team (ended up making the decision not to go forward as they weren't comfortable with the hire).

Similarly, when they gave an estimate on Monday for the work they could accomplish on Friday (but failed to do it), depending on their reasoning (did they just grossly miss-estimate, or were there legitimate reasons, are they learning from errors). They had time to keep us updated throughout the week, to readjust, etc. All things that you typically learn with time.