1. 30 minute phone screen with talent acquisition: typical background questions. They inform me they will reach out later if i'm selected for next round. 2. Talent acquisition reaches out via email to setup zoom tech screen with hiring manager for next round. 3. Hiring manager fails to show up to zoom tech screen. I immediately reach out to talent acquisition to find out what happened. Talent acquisition replies hours later, at the end of the day - they apologize and say they'll reach out soon to setup another zoom tech screen. 4. Talent acquisition reaches out days later to setup another zoom tech screen with a different engineering manager - not the hiring manager actually hiring for this role. 5. Zoom tech screen: typical work related background questions + leetcode medium. I complete the leetcode medium easily and impress the engineering manager who informs me they would love to move me on to the next round: "virtual on-site". 5. Virtual on-site: I finally meet with the actual hiring manager hiring for this role. I also meet with a member of the product/business team and 2 software engineers (individually) - these involve simple live coding problems + "collaborative" system design questions. All conversations are pleasant - I leave feeling great about my candidacy. 1 week passes - I reach out to talent acquisition to find out my status. No response after 1 week - I reach out to talent acquisition again to find out my status. After another week I (finally) get an answer: rejected for lack of experience. Apparently it took 3+ weeks to receive a response because they "liked" me, but were looking for more experience - so they tried to find a fit on another team within the company. My experience is listed on my resume. Why string me along for over 2 months and have me participate in a virtual on-site just to reject me for something they could immediately see on my resume? This was a very disorganized/confusing process and I'm not buying the reason they provided for rejection. At no point during the interview process was I led to believe my "lack of experience" was an issue. Overall - this was a complete waste of time.

Got an internal referral and spoke with an engineer on a team I was excited about joining. A recruiter picked up my referral and reached out to me, and we had a good conversation in which she told me she'd reach out to various hiring managers to schedule an initial interview. It took her a month to respond to my two followup emails, and it's now been a week since my response to that email without a reply.