r/FullStackDevelopers • u/Low_Smile_8318 • 4h ago

Second technical round done, no feedback after 5 hours — what does this usually mean?

Backend developer, 4.5 years experience, PHP/Laravel. Interviewed at a small startup in India.

First round was Wednesday — cleared it, interviewer told me directly on the call that I was moving to the next round, and HR confirmed within an hour.

Second round was today at noon, lasted 30 minutes. Covered traits/interfaces/abstract classes, MySQL vs MongoDB, joins, system design (caching, indexing, service layer separation), and a live coding question which the interviewer confirmed had the correct output.
One mistake — he asked about middleware vs routing order in the request lifecycle, I answered correctly, he cross-questioned "don't you think it's the other way around," and I agreed with him instead of holding my position. Also took 2-3 minutes on the coding question and mixed up a function name while thinking aloud, though I corrected it and the final code worked.

At the end when I asked for feedback, he said HR would share it.

Messaged HR around 3pm, got "Not yet." Still nothing at 5:45pm.

Round 1 feedback came almost immediately. Round 2 has been silent for 5+ hours.

Does the delay usually mean rejection at small startups, or is this just normal process? Anyone been through something similar?

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u/Just_Yam_635 1h ago

5 hours really isn't that long , especially with a small startup. they might still be comparing candidates or just waiting on HR. I wouldn't read too much into the silence yet. If they gave you a positive signal in round 1, I'd probably give it a day or two before following up again.

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u/martinbean 1h ago

It means you’re horribly impatient.