The total process spanned 8 weeks, which included three different phone interviews, two sets of on-site interviews, and a 3-week-long reference check with three references.

At the end of the process, they went with another candidate. I had to do most of the follow-ups, as the recruiter wasn't making much effort to keep me updated. Promises were made to give a decision within a week, and having failed to hear back, I had to follow up to get a decision.

One of my references let me know that they stood her up during a scheduled call and then kept rescheduling time with her multiple times.

Overall, I came away with a poor candidate experience (and impression of the company), especially due to the opaqueness of the timelines. Very little respect was shown to the candidate by not proactively providing updates, leaving it up to the candidate to do most of the guesswork and follow-ups.

While they had other candidates in the mix, which is fine, they weren't transparent about it and kept stringing me along. Also, they weren't very respectful of one of my references' time.

Coding, System Design, Engineering Management Motivations.

I came away wondering if they actually know how to assess management competencies they care about.

They need to spend a lot of time refining their questions and ironing out their process.

As it stands now, they are wasting everyone's time by going back and forth with multiple ad-hoc rounds and relying on references for key signals.