That's probably true, but I think at least part of it is just smaller companies doing what bigger companies do, in a kind of cargo cult ritual.
The last company I worked at had 8 interviews, which I thought was a lot. My current company (about 100 people) had no less than 11 scheduled interviews!
Of those, only the first 2 were with people in my department — my manager first, then my manager and immediate coworkers. There was another group call with people in a related team I might conceivably be expected to liason with eventually. Fair enough.
The remaining 8 calls were with leadership in every other division in the company, most of which I would never work with. People with jobs where I don't even know what they do, and I'm sure they had no idea what I do. I just politely made conversation with them and answered their (very general) questions.
Now that I've worked there a while, I have never spoken with these people again, or worked in any way with the teams they oversee.
I've also participated in a few interviews at this company now, from the other end of the Zoom call, and I know how it works: literally every branch of the org chart gets a meeting for every interviewee, regardless of what they're applying for. Everyone has a chance to say "no", but in practice nobody outside the relevant teams is going to exercise that veto, because they are well aware that they are unqualified to judge the candidate's skills, and will never have to work with them anyway.
It's just a big waste of time for everyone involved.
The last company I worked at had 8 interviews, which I thought was a lot. My current company (about 100 people) had no less than 11 scheduled interviews!
Of those, only the first 2 were with people in my department — my manager first, then my manager and immediate coworkers. There was another group call with people in a related team I might conceivably be expected to liason with eventually. Fair enough.
The remaining 8 calls were with leadership in every other division in the company, most of which I would never work with. People with jobs where I don't even know what they do, and I'm sure they had no idea what I do. I just politely made conversation with them and answered their (very general) questions.
Now that I've worked there a while, I have never spoken with these people again, or worked in any way with the teams they oversee.
I've also participated in a few interviews at this company now, from the other end of the Zoom call, and I know how it works: literally every branch of the org chart gets a meeting for every interviewee, regardless of what they're applying for. Everyone has a chance to say "no", but in practice nobody outside the relevant teams is going to exercise that veto, because they are well aware that they are unqualified to judge the candidate's skills, and will never have to work with them anyway.
It's just a big waste of time for everyone involved.