I heard about the role through a recruiter. The recruiter was pleasant, and after a couple of weeks, I received a request to apply formally for the role. Another few days passed, and the first round was scheduled.

I felt good vibes from the first round, and the second round was scheduled. The second round was a relatively easy algorithm/live coding challenge. I liked the interviewer for that round as well.

For the third round, it was a whiteboard/systems design challenge, which I felt confident in. This was immediately followed by a product design interview. The product design interview was conducted by a junior engineer whose questions weren't clear.

After a few days, the feedback indicated I had one minor flaw in my system design (which, if they had asked, I would have explained the difference between an iterator and an array in the selected database) and that the product interview didn't contain enough new ideas.

It seems that a junior engineer with three years of experience isn't the best judge of the skillset of someone with over ten years of experience. It's unfortunate to have spent so much time interviewing only to be assessed by someone who lacks the skills to evaluate that level of experience. I usually approach interviews with an attitude of wanting to learn something from the interviewers. This turned out to have just been a waste of time.

Design an API to handle 1,000,000 push notifications.