I interviewed for a Staff Product Manager role and appreciated the chance to meet several members of the team. The individuals I spoke with were thoughtful, and the discussions themselves were engaging. That said, the interview process gradually shifted into multiple rounds of deep product discussions and idea brainstorming around real problems the company is actively facing. Across several sessions, I was asked to share detailed approaches, product ideas, and solution directions in a way that went beyond typical evaluation. After a significant time investment, the process escalated into a task requiring candidates to build out features using tools like Claude or Cursor. Using these tools in interviews can make sense when the work is clearly hypothetical and not tied to real product needs. In this case, the progression of the process made it feel like the output could be directly applicable. At that point, the process began to feel less like evaluation and more like iterative idea generation and solutioning tied to real product problems. More rigorous interview processes do exist in top-tier technology companies, where they are typically well-structured, clearly scoped, and aligned with both the level of the role and compensation. Here, the overall time investment and depth of requested output felt disproportionate, and may not align with what many experienced candidates expect.