• Phase 1: Recruiter reached out, I was excited, but the recruiter kept lowballing and pushing me towards "Production engineering" side. After me saying no, the recruiter said they would love to have me interview for SWE openings.

• Phase 2: Telephonic interview. Two DS and algo questions. Solved both of them. Discussed optimizations.

• Phase 3 (Virtual Onsite) 3.1: Behavioral: Went very well, generic team and tech questions.

3.2 & 3.3: Code interview: Two DS and algo questions each round. Solved all four questions with the best possible runtime. Discussed optimizations.

3.4: Design interview: Very egoistic, my way or the highway guy took the interview. He was looking at his phone all throughout and his screen. I had to repeat a lot of things during the interview. He got stuck on one NoSQL JSON DB design. After proposing two solutions, I was getting to what he needed, but then he said it's 45 minutes, I gotta go. Later I checked online that all my design was dot correct.

• Phase 4: Week 1: We are reviewing. Week 2: We are reviewing. It is looking great and all looks positive. Week 3: We are reviewing. It is looking great and all looks positive. Recruiter: No, we think you are great at coding, but because of the designing interview, it's a no. Now there is a cool-off time for 1 year before you can re-interview.

Later, another recruiter reached me out. We have an exception if you want to go through a shorter interview for "production engineering" currently.

All in all, a horrible experience. Recruiters are very lowballing, pushy to make you join the infra team, and interviewers are all from one race, hard to communicate, and egoists.

NDA.