The interviews was carried out by employees at the same level, no product head/ lead took part in any of the stages. The task was straightforward and was presented to a product and engineering manager. They were cold and seemed disinterested as if they were forced to attend. There were awkward silences when I prompted them for questions. They just seemed to lack interviewing experience/ skills. The first stage interviewer was more positive and engaging. The feedback between each stage was around a week.

Recruiter reached out to me via Hired, and we had a great initial chat. I was moved on to the round with the hiring manager, and the recruiter was responsive and helpful (even friendly) throughout this process. He was slated to schedule me for the next round, then suddenly came back a few weeks later to apologize and say that the headcount had been cut. I asked if we could keep in touch and he said of course, so I reached out to him 3 months later to see if any new roles had come up . Silence. I reached out again to follow up two weeks later, and silence again. Really frustrating given that the recruiter was extremely kind/friendly to me during my initial interviewing process - he spent an hour talking to me on video during what was supposed to be a 30 min intro call. It made the whole situation feel very disingenuous and a big waste of my time.