The consultant and the HR team did not know the exact job profile they were interviewing for.

I was told they would interview me first and then decide what designation to match the skillset.

The interview process involved grilling by eight different teams, ranging from SSEs to Directors, and then heads of each functional unit. They insisted on interviewing on a weekday and took about 6-7 hours of my time.

An SSE asking code-level questions for a senior leadership position was not funny at all.

Asked to solve a design problem with their existing software, with limited information of the back-end. They were honest enough to say it was for a real problem they wanted to solve.

They did not accept a generic, standards-based design approach and wanted a detailed solution, generally unheard of in an interview session.