I get that, from your perspective, this is a forgivable thing.
But if I'm Google or Rackspace, and I'm reading about this process from your side, I have to be asking myself "why am I paying these clowns?"
Hiring is one of the most important things companies do. If they are this disorganized, and if their cultural commitment to hiring is so poor that people are regularly brought in and interviewers are not present or available or confused about why either of you are there, then there is a huge amount of waste going on and there's a huge amount of missed opportunities.
I don't know you, but let's assume you are really good at what you do (and going by the number of people you had recommending you, you're probably pretty good at what you do). The fact of the matter is that Google totally missed the boat here and burned a lot of extra money in the process. Beyond that, for the two years or so that they were jerking around, you could have been a part of the team, making solid contributions. Instead, you were elsewhere making solid contributions that they may have had to defend against. So, the real waste is in the opportunity cost.
What I'm getting at is, if I'm a senior executive at one of these companies, I have to be looking at my hiring process and going "WTF?". Because that's what it deserves. Something is seriously broken and it is potentially a strategic threat.
But if I'm Google or Rackspace, and I'm reading about this process from your side, I have to be asking myself "why am I paying these clowns?"
Hiring is one of the most important things companies do. If they are this disorganized, and if their cultural commitment to hiring is so poor that people are regularly brought in and interviewers are not present or available or confused about why either of you are there, then there is a huge amount of waste going on and there's a huge amount of missed opportunities.
I don't know you, but let's assume you are really good at what you do (and going by the number of people you had recommending you, you're probably pretty good at what you do). The fact of the matter is that Google totally missed the boat here and burned a lot of extra money in the process. Beyond that, for the two years or so that they were jerking around, you could have been a part of the team, making solid contributions. Instead, you were elsewhere making solid contributions that they may have had to defend against. So, the real waste is in the opportunity cost.
What I'm getting at is, if I'm a senior executive at one of these companies, I have to be looking at my hiring process and going "WTF?". Because that's what it deserves. Something is seriously broken and it is potentially a strategic threat.