Comment by ryandrake

Yea, it's not a meet-and-greet, as in there can be no impact to the outcome of the interview. You're definitely still interviewing. But, in every case where I got to the point of "You're going to chat with the [Founder|CEO|BigTech VP]," at that point the job was mine to lose. They're not going to waste a VIP's time if they're not serious about making you an offer. You effectively have the offer. Your job when talking to the VIP person at the end is to "sound like a likable, competent person, who VIP would be cool with saying 'yea I hired this person'." That's pretty much all you need to do.

Generally the chat with the VIP means: "You have the job, but I (VIP) want to just double check that my underling hiring managers are not totally useless."