What made him middling? It was 15 years ago so I don't recall the details. The usual reasons are things like: didn't answer some questions well, or maybe their

What made him middling? It was 15 years ago so I don't recall the details. The usual reasons are things like: didn't answer some questions well, or maybe their resume oversold their accomplishments (eg, "Proficient in verilog, C, C++, pascal, fortran, javascript, java" "OK, describe one of the programs you have written in java." "Well, uh, this one time there was this program that was already written, and I had to add some better error messages when it received bad input.") Why did he go through the full round of interviews? Because (1) he was referred by an existing employee so interviewer were inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, and (2) he wasn't terrible, just nothing special; it sometimes happens that one person gets a low impression and the others think they are great and we hire them anyway. You surmise I must be telling part of the story because his reaction doesn't fit my description of the process. Yes, that is exactly the point of telling the story -- his response wasn't appropriate. Had I felt he had a reason to react that way, I wouldn't be retelling the story.