This often baffles me, as a foreigner in America (currently in a position where I occasionally hire people).
The American employee is probably the least protected in the West. Firing is about as simple & cheap as it gets outside of an Indonesian sweatshop. Many start as contractors anyway. The upside should have been that companies would be quicker to hire. Instead sprung a weird culture of "the four hour interview" (sometimes several of these).
There's actually not that much you can find out about someone before hiring them: "Show me a piece of code you've written" - hopefully it's on GitHub or similar, ideally forked by some other people too - "Tell me about some design decisions you made when building this". You should also try to gauge personality, motivation, curiosity and chemistry.
That's about all you'll know, regardless of how convoluted your process. But fortunately you're not in France, so if it doesn't work out you can always go your separate ways.
When companies take too long to hire it usually indicates fear of making decisions. Interviewers are afraid to say someone's a good/bad fit. The CTO is afraid to look bad for hiring the wrong person. It's probably not going to be a fun place to work if you want to create new things.
The American employee is probably the least protected in the West. Firing is about as simple & cheap as it gets outside of an Indonesian sweatshop. Many start as contractors anyway. The upside should have been that companies would be quicker to hire. Instead sprung a weird culture of "the four hour interview" (sometimes several of these).
There's actually not that much you can find out about someone before hiring them: "Show me a piece of code you've written" - hopefully it's on GitHub or similar, ideally forked by some other people too - "Tell me about some design decisions you made when building this". You should also try to gauge personality, motivation, curiosity and chemistry.
That's about all you'll know, regardless of how convoluted your process. But fortunately you're not in France, so if it doesn't work out you can always go your separate ways.
When companies take too long to hire it usually indicates fear of making decisions. Interviewers are afraid to say someone's a good/bad fit. The CTO is afraid to look bad for hiring the wrong person. It's probably not going to be a fun place to work if you want to create new things.