I had three interviews, and I'm not sure if there would have been a fourth one for salary negotiation had I been selected.

The first two online interviews were identical. One was with HR, and the next was with the team lead. We discussed my salary expectations and previous experience. These interviews felt redundant and like a waste of time, as they were so similar. I guess HR just wanted to justify their existence.

The third interview was in person and included a principal engineer, a senior engineer, and a team lead (who was busy and didn't show as planned).

I did little to no preparation for this one due to my mixed feelings about whether it was the right direction for me at the time. While I performed solidly, though far from great, I understood immediately that we were not a good match.

It was amusing that one of the interviewers didn't know how to turn off AI in the coding tool (implying he uses it constantly). However, this was held against me during the coding portion of the interview, even though I was the one who pointed it out.

Nevertheless, the main issue for me was that the energy between myself and the principal engineer leading the interview was just not right, which is normal and can happen.

That being said, I hold no grudges for not being selected (I likely would have declined the offer at the time). However, I do feel strongly about being notified by HR about their decision to pursue other candidates three months after the interviews. Were they holding other candidates as backups?

I completed three rounds of interviews in June and was notified at the end of September. This was disappointing from such a well-known and respected company.

Code: Parse some networking config via Netmiko and Python.

The difference between a next-gen firewall and a firewall.

What are known NAT types?