I was invited for an hour long interview. The interview felt like a bait-and-switch. The first 30 minutes were a polished, one-way sales pitch about the company’s “innovative” culture and “exciting” environment. When I tried asking clarifying questions, the interviewers were visibly annoyed, treating my input as an interruption. Once they finally shifted to interviewing me, I expected a balanced discussion about my technical background, problem-solving approach, and past projects. Instead, most of the remaining time focused on details about my previous employers and drifted into personal questions unrelated to the role. It felt more like a background check than a professional evaluation. They also proudly declared they’d completely rebuilt their entire codebase three times in the past five years. To me, this screams poor planning and immense technical debt. Worse still, they also told me there are no dedicated DevOps or IT support teams. Developers are expected to code, deploy, monitor, and troubleshoot everything themselves. I withdrew my application immediately after. Overall, a bizarre interview experience with far too many red flags.