Four rounds of interviews is not that many nowadays in 2018. In the past 2 years before I landed in my current role where I'm happy with, I went through about 8

Four rounds of interviews is not that many nowadays in 2018. In the past 2 years before I landed in my current role where I'm happy with, I went through about 8~10 rounds of on-sites like that (spread out over 2 years) before getting an offer. I have 13 years of experience in Silicon Valley with a CS degree at a Top 50 university (Top 10 public) and I'm not even seeking leadership positions, just IC, and in some cases just interviewing for mid level. Anecdotally, trends in recruiting in tech startups have gotten strange. Companies nowadays like to complain about shortage of talent, but interviewers like to be super picky (I've been on that side of the fence the past couple years, to witness the passing of perfectly fine candidates who just didn't get A+ on the interviews by other interviewers). In 2008 I would interview for 2-3 companies and get an offer. In those days I also interviewed candidates for the employer and ended up hiring a lot of great engineers, whose interview performance would not be considered good by standards nowadays (but they did end up being perfectly good devs in the company we ended up hiring them at). Those days are mostly gone. FAANGs have popularized being extremely picky at hiring and smaller startups picked up on this and believe it to be the right way to hire. It's a messed up situation.