I’m an engineer with 8 years of experience, and I interviewed for a tech lead role. The screening stage was standard; I met a pleasant female recruiter. Next came the technical interview stage. Recruiter told me to expect live coding with an algorithmic problem, plus questions on Go, Postgres, and Kafka. The interviewer turned out to be a very nice guy. He asked all the right questions — I’d gladly have someone like him on my own team. I successfully solved the algorithmic task and answered all the questions on Go, Postgres, and Kafka. But it turned out that wasn’t all — they also gave me a system design question. I hadn’t been warned about that, but luckily I’m well-versed in system design, so it wasn’t a problem. Then recruiter told me there would be yet another system design round and an interview with the Head of Engineering, as well as a cultural fit check. I was surprised to hear there would be another system design round and no assessment of team management skills — but since it was a tech lead role, not a team lead one, I didn’t think much of it. But I should have! Anyway, I’m good at system design, but for preparation I went all in: on top of the fintech design patterns I already knew, I crammed an encyclopedia’s worth of knowledge — chat apps, video streaming platforms, URL shorteners, and more. At the actual interview, Head of Engineering introduced himself as a rather pleasant, if slightly tired-sounding, man. I had no issues communicating with him. But it turned out he didn’t ask about system design at all! I was asked about team management, DevOps practices, and analysis of previous projects. Needless to say, I wasn’t just unprepared — my prep on system design actually worked against me. And of course, I was under a lot of stress. I don’t know why recruiter miscommunicated the interview format twice. In the end, it feels like I tried really hard, i fought fairly, but couldn’t get beyond that particular recruiter. It’s both hilarious and a little sad. Hope, Vivid improves its hiring process.