The interview process was long and arduous and with very sporadic communication with the team over the length of nearly 3 months. I had 6 rounds of interviews in total, (one of the rounds was the onsite interviews with 7 different employees) which included several technical interviews that turned into take home assignments that I spent a good 20+ hours working on in total. They didn’t pay me a dime for my time, nor did they compensate me for traveling to and from their campus (I live in the East Bay) for two different rounds of interviews (one of them was the last one with the founder/CTO Surya). At the time I was extremely excited about the opportunity, despite the lack luster communication and complete lack of feedback or updates from them, which gave me the impression that they by default ghost candidates they no longer see as useful. I got a text one Friday evening from one of the engineers I would be working with that I was “still in the running” even though earlier that week I heard from my recruiter that one of the directors said they decided to not move forward with my candidacy altogether. Talk about a disorganized lot. It also gave me spineless/cowardly vibes the way they never bothered to communicate feedback or bad news with me directly. The only reason I think I was able to make it so far in the interview process and get any sort of updates was because I had an excellent recruiter who was advocating for me. If it weren’t for him, I probably would have given up much earlier. At that point of being given interview whiplash, I continued to give the interview process my all but became more emotionally detached. I can say that the employees there are extremely smart and innovate people working on groundbreaking tech, but I think it worked out for the best in terms of cultural fit. These people, or at least the ones managing these processes seem to think they owe you nothing even after they put you through an emotional roller coaster and countless hours of high-stress work and seem to be allergic to giving any feedback whatsoever, much to the detriment of the dedicated applicant. The culture to me is lack luster, giving a strong impression of social ineptitude. I don’t believe that the interaction was normal or reflected well on them, even for a highly stressed, fast moving startup. Even though I am perfectly content with the outcome, I am annoyed that they never bothered to give me a lick of feedback despite me requesting it multiple times, after everything.