The Siemens saga began when the Dutch Yacht Uitzenbureau (employment agency) approached me for a Project Manager position at Siemens in The Netherlands. After an initial online interview, I was quickly invited for a face-to-face interview in The Hague. (Worse mentioning that when my daughter called afterward to check in on me, my only remark was, "The coffee was great." Having conducted many interviews in the past, I didn't have strong feelings about the outcome.) However, the discussion raised some concerns about the role's scope which I will not enclose here due to privacy. After giving it some thought, I decided to withdraw and informed the Yacht representatives of my decision. To my surprise, Yacht quickly reached out again, saying the Siemens interviewers were highly impressed with me and wanted to proceed with my application. After reconsidering, I agreed to continue and was invited for a second face-to-face interview. This time, I met with two mid- to senior-level interviewers—though, unfortunately, no coffee, as the cafeteria closed at 15:00. The questions were fairly standard—the kind one could answer in the middle of the night—while my answers were less conventional. Again, I didn’t have a strong sense of how things had gone. A few days later, I received exceptionally positive feedback from Yacht, describing me as a highly skilled professional with a great personality, among other praises. As a result, we entered negotiations, but their (Yacht) offer was far below market value and my expectations. After multiple discussions with Yacht and, indirectly, with Siemens, I received confirmation that Siemens NL was interested in making me a direct offer. At this stage, all communication still went through Yacht. Luckily, I hadn’t opened a bottle of champagne just yet. Delays in responses started to pile up, personnel at Yacht changed, and eventually, I was informed that while Siemens NL generally considers direct hires, they had decided against it in my case (!?). At this point, my connection with Yacht ended, and they took the initiative to close my application. I then applied for the same role directly through Siemens' job portal. For over a week, the status of my application remained unchanged. Seeking clarification, I reached out and received a call from Siemens Talent Acquisition. They informed me that the hiring manager was on vacation but that they would follow up. They also mentioned that, based on my CV, they were considering me for a higher position as an Engineering Manager. The next morning, I received an email stating: "…after consultation with {hiring manager}, we have decided not to reopen communication and will not proceed with the application process." Needless to say that this made me wonder about real reasons behind this shocking decision (age? race? what..?), about about fairness of Siemens procedures. And that was the end of the saga. I’ll leave the conclusions to you.