Frustrating and inconsistent interview process (code pairing felt like a trap This was honestly one of the more frustrating interview experiences I have had for a senior/lead role. The process included a code pairing session, which was presented as collaborative. In reality, it felt highly directive and inconsistent. I followed the interviewer’s instructions during the exercise and explicitly called out technical trade-offs while doing so. Despite that, the feedback later claimed I had “overlooked” those exact trade-offs. That’s simply not true. So the situation becomes: * follow the interviewer → get penalized * don’t follow → probably get penalized for not being collaborative There’s no clear or fair evaluation path there. Another red flag: I was initially told during interview that two additional interviewers would join, but then midway it changed to them being “unavailable.” For a company that emphasizes professionalism, that felt disorganized and poorly coordinated. Also surprising for a senior-level interview , a noticeable amount of time was spent checking whether I had previously coded something using basic commands like git diff. That’s not a meaningful signal for a Lead role and felt like a poor use of interview time. If they are doubting the candidate using poor tactic like this, the company should consider switching strategy to test the candidate rather than giving problem upfront. What makes this worse is the follow-up. When these inconsistencies were raised, the response from recruit team didn’t actually address them. Instead, it was reframed as “testing adaptability” and “responding to guidance,” without explaining how that aligns with feedback that contradicts what was explicitly discussed during the session. On paper, the feedback listed several strong positives, which makes the final decision even harder to reconcile. It feels like the outcome was decided first, and the reasoning was fitted afterward. Overall, the people were polite, but the process itself felt inconsistent, poorly aligned, and not reflective of what actually happened in the interview.