Got a call from a recruiter and learned about the job role. The recruiters were prompt and helpful in arranging the calls with the teams.

An initial coding round followed by another technical phone screen. Everything was good until here.

Now for the last round, it was 5 interviews, each of 45 minutes, and a 15-minute initial HR intro. I felt good until here, and once the onsite interviews started, I was devastated.

There was a system design, Linux internals, automation in-depth, coding, and a managerial interview.

There isn't enough context given to the questions asked. Even when I tried to ask for more context, I felt the interviewers to be confused. Also, the people who were interviewing me don't even belong to the team. This happened in system troubleshooting and automation in-depth discussions.

I felt no interviewer put effort into knowing about me. They all straight away got into the questions, which made me really uncomfortable.

The person who interviewed me in coding was good. Yet, my prep in algorithms is off. I passed the initial coding round; I failed here.

To top all of the above, the managerial round was a disaster. There was huge silence from the manager, like it was awkward for me to ask questions. I felt mentally exhausted and disappointed to waste my whole day.

System design basics, Linux troubleshooting commands, automation and configuration management, etc.