One of their recruiters contacted me on LinkedIn. They were looking for someone with a device driver background. After a few emails back and forth, they decided to bring me into their office instead of the regular phone screening.

Initially, I was told this was still a screening process before the actual interview. I thought it was strange to have a screening process that lasted five hours. The questions were fairly generic, like how do you reverse a linked list, DMA vs. I/O, etc. There weren't any trick questions.

They were all nice people, but I felt there was a disconnect between them and the recruiter arranging the interview. Some of them didn't even know what position I was interviewing for.

I was under the assumption that I would be called for the next round of interviews, and then the recruiter called me and said they were extending an offer to me. I was surprised at the turn of events but relieved that I didn't have to repeat the same things again for another few hours.

The offer they extended was probably good in market value, but they were barely able to match what I was making in terms of base salary. Their USP seems to be the restricted stock they offer people. It would have been a nice match for me, except that I received an offer from an early-stage startup which promised me much better equity (apples and oranges again).

Overall, the experience was highly positive.

What was the toughest problem I faced and how did I approach it?