I applied online, and a recruiter reached out to set up the first-round interview. This was a very enjoyable conversation about my research background.

After some miscommunication, they decided to skip a second-round coding interview and proceed straight to five virtual on-site interviews, split across two days. These were intended to cover behavioral, ML knowledge, coding, coding, and ML knowledge.

The recruiter suggested the coding rounds would be LeetCode-style algorithms and data structures, which seemed odd for this position. They turned out to be pair programming sessions for small machine learning/computer vision algorithms, as one would expect. This indicated the recruiter was not familiar with the position.

Moreover, the behavioral interview ended up being another chat about past research, and the second ML knowledge interview became another coding interview, which was puzzling. All interviews, apart from the first round and the "behavioral" interview, seemed rigid and poorly aligned with the position. How many different ways does one want to test coding for a tech lead manager before being satisfied?

I did not see any sustained effort to understand cultural alignment or genuine interest in my ability to lead. An element of maturity, where we acknowledge that an interview process goes both ways, was also missing.

The final interview involved no introduction period and no time for questions from the interviewee. After these six interviews, spanning about 4.5 hours of my time, I learned I hadn't even spoken to the hiring manager for this position yet.

A couple of days later, I received a rejection email from a no-reply address without feedback, even though I had been in contact with six interviewers and two recruiters previously. An email thanking them and soliciting feedback received no response. This demonstrated a lack of humanity in their interview process.

Past research work:

Pair programming a simplified version of a popular machine learning algorithm with time complexity analysis and thinking of improvements.