TL;DR: The interviewers were good, but the recruiter and HR were totally unprofessional. They knew from the start they wouldn't offer the CTC I asked for (which they stated initially), yet they made me go through the entire process just to save face.

The technical recruiter reached out two days after I applied. They asked standard questions like my reason for switching jobs and my current role. Then, the conversation turned to salary expectations and my current CTC. I asked for a standard 30% hike on my current salary. The recruiter immediately stated that this was beyond their budget, which was acceptable at that point.

However, the following day, another person from their team called, saying they had discussed internally and were ready to offer the CTC I asked for. I agreed, and interviews were scheduled. Two rounds were planned back-to-back (one on system design and one on DS/Algo). The rounds were easy, and the recruiter then called me to schedule five more rounds over two days (one HLD, one LLD, one interview with their VP, one on coding skills, and one on value fit).

The technical rounds were very good, and the interviewers were awesome. We had great discussions.

However, the round with their VP was more of me talking to myself as he was busy elsewhere. He was only interested in textbook questions like defining SDLC and agile methodologies, with no discussion about my work profile at all. The final round was a value fit interview, which was also a good interaction.

I cleared all rounds, which they confirmed. However, when we got to the salary discussion, they said my asked CTC was still beyond their budget and they could at most match my current CTC, promising a salary hike during appraisals. I asked how I could expect appraisals if they couldn't match my current salary now. They had no answer and later emailed me saying they had moved forward with another candidate.

Seven rounds of interviews, ten hours away from my office over four days, and at the end, they circled back to what they had stated initially. It would have been professional to admit this at the outset, but to maintain their image, they subjected me to such a lengthy process. This was totally unacceptable.

I hope their CEO will address such malpractices.

Just go through Glassdoor.

Exact questions were repeated.

Design bit.ly, coding on string manipulation, etc.