This was in early 2025. I was contacted by a young, eager, but ultimately disorganized recruiter who wasted my time. I went through most of a full interview loop. After several rounds, they decided they had mis-leveled me (started interviewing for enterprise, then bumped down to commercial). I was still very interested in commercial (product is genuinely valuable and the company was growing). They put me through another full loop with the commercial team. All seemed good. At the last minute they hire a new manager for that team. She and the head of sales engineering tell me it's not a fit, and that they think it's a bad idea to hire someone for a lower position after initially interviewing for a higher position. I can understand why they would have that opinion but why wait until the end of the process (which lasted 7 weeks!) to make that decision. I actually really enjoyed meeting the team members who interviewed me (except final round obviously), but I think the recruiter totally mismanaged and mis-communicated internally and with me. They were growing fast and things were chaotic there, but still not an excuse in my opinion.

I was contacted via LinkedIn regarding a SE position with them. I was told that the hiring manager was very impressed with my skill set and would like to speak with me. A week later I spoke on a 30 minute call with the hiring manager. He seemed slightly agitated and rushed when speaking with me. To the point that he took less than 15 seconds to introduce himself and barrel questions at me in an impersonal manner. The hiring manager alluded to the idea that my skill set was a little "light" even though the recruiter said I'd be a great fit. I recall after we talked he pretty much hung up on me during the Zoom call abruptly. I talked to one of the people on the team too for 30 minutes which was very high level. A day or two later I got a standard rejection. I really did not care about the rejection given that they approached me for a role, but I would hope when interviewing other candidates they would show a higher level of professionalism moving forward.