1. Recruite introduction (went well except the recruiter wasn't very clear on the salary bands and kept confusion USD with CAD)
2. Sync with Hiring Manager (went well)
3. Interview with Karat (went well)
4. Interview with two engineers at CircleCI (sucked)

Couple of points why interview with the Engineers was a bad experience.

1. CircleCI uses a slightly uncommon tech stack focussed on functional programming. Coming from a OO background I always kept asking/confirming with the recruiter right from the 1st call that I don't have experience with OOP and the recruiter, the HM both kept saying it doesnt matter, we are very open and as long as you clear the interview, we are fine.

Then the Engineers turn up in the final round and asked me if I have experience with a functional programming language. I told them I know Scala, but it is not fully functional. I found one of the engineers to be a little rude when for one of the questions, I asked if my answer was sufficient or should I clarify more - He basically said you are trying to sell yourself to us, so you can judge.

Even if I wanted to I could not imagine myself working alongside someone who basically told me to sell myself to him in my interview.

Result - After a week, the recruiter got back and told me they were looking for someone with experience in one of the functional languages. I understand and respect the requirements of role.

The only regret I have is that if I was told that this is a requirement and not a nice-to-have, I could save myself around 7-10 days of interview preparations and 5 actual interview hours.

1. Standard easy LeetCode in Karat interview.

2. EM interview was mostly behavioural.

3. Engineer interview was an unstructured interaction. They were basically looking for a "Vibe" match instead of following a standard process.