[zipy124]

I mean we know the answer to this. As you go up the seniority ladder interviews become less and less onerous and at some tipping point are not required. Aqui-hires such as Alexandr Wang at Meta for example. Non aqui-hire we have for instance when Andrej Karpathy joined Anthropic. I somehow doubt they went through as many round as those below them.

Apart from that when lower down in seniority generally start-ups. There are many founders who get funding, know good people, and will hire them without many interviews. Having a good network is critical for exploiting all of these, as the interviewer has already effectively judged your skills over many years or decades.

[bradlys]

I don't think your examples are even remotely scalable nor do they pay well. Joining a startup at an early stage where you know a founder and can bypass interview steps is notoriously low compensation.

Acquisition based hiring isn't a real methodology. That's being a founder of a very successful startup and getting acquired. That's like saying "want a new job? Get your company acquired by a new one."

[zipy124]

Start-ups can pay very well, I'm not sure why you would think otherwise? Given a series A can be around the ten million mark, there is more than enough capital to pay competitive rates and still be small enough to have the flexibility to hire out of their network.

[bradlys]

Never seen anyone pulling down $500k/yr from a startup with that little capital.