Two recruiters from two different teams reached out to me.

The first one: With the first team, I spent two months (yes, two!) doing staggered Skype interviews with engineers, architects, program managers, the hiring manager, and teams in other geographies. I was willing to go along with this routine because it meant spending an hour each time in the morning over the two months. I was astonished by this process.

At the end of the process, I was informed I was not a fit for the position after more than 10 interviews. My analysis is as follows:

• This team had two engineers, one architect, two senior managers (one in Asia), three program/product managers, and one QA manager.
• The ratio of engineers to other members was abysmally low.
• The hiring manager wanted way more thought and strategic leadership than technical ability.

This led me to believe that as good as Autodesk's core products were, the rest of the organization did not have technical challenges.

The second one: This team was thankfully more agile. I had two phone screens – the hiring manager and an architect – before being called onsite. I met one engineer, had a phone interview with a high-level executive, and met two other managers. Except for the interview with the engineer, all the other interviews were too fluffy and asked situational/conflict-oriented questions. The engineer and I had a good discussion around technical stacks and challenges in this role. This team had more contractors than engineers.

Again, this team wanted more soft skills, and I was not considered for this role.

My takeaway from both interviews was that this firm is filled with a lot of mid-level managers who've been there a long time but don't necessarily know how to effect engineering change. Some prospective candidates may welcome these "coasting" positions, but I felt I would have been severely underutilized here.

Did you ever execute an engineering task without full approval, and how did you resolve things later?