Aaptiv interview questions

The first screen looks great. The guy on the phone was quite nice and excited about the project. I felt like we were working together on problems. I passed that interview and then came to on site. The onsite starts with a coding challenge, like building a quick prototype. I enjoy a lot about dealing with problem and writing code. The person who was around me seems to have no clue about what I was talking about, they felt like the inspectors for an exam rather than teammates. The interviewer there are friendly and polite, but lack of professionalism or necessary skillsets on the relevant domain. It sounds like they are not a very mature startup, don't know what to do for driving their business growth, and pretty defensive on new ideas (why do they hire from external?). They wanted a lot of opinions from me, but not appreciate any of those. Maybe they don't even understand what I was saying. Only one guy (like a lead, don't remember his title) out of them knows this field pretty well, could be a good mentor or person to work with. At least he is very passionate about problem-solving. Overall, it was an uncomfortable experience. Most of the guys there seem to have no idea about what good talent is and what they are looking for. Very sad.

I have been in the industry for several years, and this was hands-down the worst interview experience of my career so far. I'm intentionally keeping this general enough to not be easily personally identifiable, but I wanted to give a heads-up for any future candidates. Many communications were sloppy/unprofessional, and demanded immediate replies. To their credit, I usually got fast updates and replies, but I'm not sure what late night and weekend emails say about work-life balance. Most interviewers were nice enough, but only one seemed genuinely excited/enthusiastic about the company. In one interview that I believe was meant to evaluate my thought process, the interviewer would interrupt as soon as I said something, and basically give me the solution (I was not struggling, just talking aloud as they asked). This happened for the entire interview and felt simultaneously patronizing and like hand-holding, even if it was meant to be helpful. From conversations and seeing the office in-person, it seemed there were startup growing pains, including organization and work-life balance. The growth seems promising at a business level, but I didn't get the sense it would be great to work there right now.