The majority of the interview process was very professional and positive. The recruiter kept me informed about the process and what to expect in each upcoming interview. The process was standard with recruiter chats up front, a first round with a coding problem and a project deep dive. The onsite involved another (harder) coding problem, a domain knowledge interview (another past project walkthrough), a system design interview, and a hiring manager fit/sell. The last step was a conversation with the director of the group. A very standard process for E6/Staff level. The interviewers were all on time and well-prepared for the interview they were giving and were all a pleasure to speak with, happily answering questions at the end and even extending the time for questions when their schedule allowed. There was a long-ish delay after the onsite to gather feedback, but the process took a little over three weeks from start to offer. The offer is where things took a profoundly negative turn. The offer was lower than what DoorDash has been paying for similar levels over the prior two years (even as the business is doing very well) despite the director stating I felt more like an E7 based on experience and performance. I got all of the usual excuses about "in this market" and "we've just changed how we handle offers" and got lots of selling about how the offer was still really good and the best they were "currently" giving as if there was some mysterious hardship that suddenly caused them to start lowballing offers. The final straw was that the delayed handling of the offer caused my start date to push past a vesting date which substantially reduced year one compensation. There was zero appetite to fix that, so I turned the offer down.

Got contact from recruiter on LinkedIn. Setup initial call, then "phone" interviews. Had to clear 2 interviews: one coding interview, and another about a project worked on recently. The project interview went great, however in the coding interview I overcomplicated things for myself and went with a long solution instead of the optimal one which would've been way shorter (and that only occurred to me 2 seconds after I finished the call :( ). I got a rejection email soon after. The interviewers were nice, and all in all, it was a positive experience.