I had sent my resume to Google for a management position, but when I received a call from a Google recruiter, she asked if I was willing to consider a Senior Staff Engineer position, given my background as a startup founder and CTO.

She then told me she could arrange a conversation with the hiring director to find out more, and I agreed.

An interview call was arranged. I was surprised to find that it wasn't with the hiring director but with another manager in the organization. His main focus was on why I had changed or left some of the companies I had worked for, which felt odd. After that, I felt they would reject me.

To my surprise, the recruiter called and said, "Your interview went well. Do you want to proceed with an on-site interview?"

She provided a bunch of details for interview preparation, which were very helpful. She outlined the format: some interviewers would focus on leadership, some on architecture, and two interviewers would focus on coding.

She also mentioned that one bad interview doesn't mean it's the end of the process. For the coding interview, the recruiter explained they would focus more on your thought process and how you arrive at solutions rather than just completing the coding question.

During the interview process, everyone was very professional and well-behaved.

In the leadership interviews, I was asked about different leadership experiences and challenges. I explained these in great detail, so I thought I did well.

In the architecture interview, I was also asked about problems I had encountered and solved earlier in my career, so I was sure my answers were correct.

In the coding interview, the interviewer asked a question that was not possible to complete in 40 minutes. However, I walked him through various different ways of solving the problem while I was writing code, and we discussed the pros and cons. So, I thought everything went well.

I was very positive after the interviews, expecting an offer. To my surprise, the recruiter called and said I was being rejected. She refused to disclose the reason. When I pressed, she would only say that the technical interview was the reason, which surprised me.

I talked to an old coworker of mine who works for Google and asked if there was any way I could know the reason, as I was sure I gave correct answers in the technical interview. He said they never disclose reasons, but when something like this happens, there's a strong possibility that the Google recruiter spoke to a current Google employee who may have worked with me previously at another company and said something negative about me.