I had two phone interviews and six back-to-back onsite interviews.

The second phone interviewer did not call at the assigned time. I had to track down the recruiter. When they finally found the interviewer, they arranged for another call.

The interviewer was clearly frazzled and had no idea how to frame questions; he got lost explaining the question itself.

Anyways, I aced both phone interviews and was invited to the onsite. They scheduled me with the same guy for the first interview. Guess what? He didn't show up, again!

I sat in the room with my 'oh so cool iPad' waiting, then he finally showed up 45 minutes late. They made him come back again after my last interview.

Total of six onsite interviews, with coding and design questions. The design interviewers weren't really sure of what they were looking for. They didn't even know how to explain the question well or how to probe deeper.

After all six interviews (the majority of which ended with the interviewer clearly impressed, and one even saying 'hope to see you around here soon'), I got a small tour of the company by the recruiter.

The next day, the recruiter called me and said that they were very impressed with my interview feedback and wanted to see where I fit. He mentioned he would call back and arrange a phone call with a hiring manager and then prepare an offer.

Few hours later, the recruiter called back and told me that none of the hiring managers found me to be a good fit, so they are not proceeding with an offer at this time. They gave some vague assurances that they will keep looking for a fit (what?!).

I found the whole interview process totally backwards. Why would you put a candidate through eight hours of interviewing, not to mention waste their entire day and energy, and then have all your interviewers give positive feedback, and then find out if he is a good fit or not?

In any mature, stable company, that kind of stuff is cleared out before the first phone interview, or during the phone interviews, or during the onsite interviews. Not after the whole process.

Technical questions were standard Software Engineering questions.

The 'host manager' asked a lot of 'fitness' related questions.

Try to read up on their open source products and prepare to prove that you have built something meaningful in your past.