An HR had conducted an interview earlier. And she was impressed. So she had scheduled a visit so all the rounds were to be completed at Brooklyn NY office.
In this company, PM and PO are the reverse from my understanding of the two job responsibilities. PO's oversee the engineering team and PMs are customer/VP facing here.
I had four rounds back to back. 2 rounds were cancelled. The most important round got rescheduled to the end. And the least important scheduled at the first.
First round of interview was with 3 Engineers
Second round was with Sr Director and VP Ops (I dont remember, but these were important guys below VP, above Engineers)
Third with VP
Fourth with Sr Product Manager
It wasnt supposed to be this way. It was supposed to be PM first, but due to a goof up in scheduling by HR, the interviews had to be rescheduled, and the PM interview got to the end. I had two rounds of interview with POs on webex which were cancelled.
1. Engineers were new to the company, not very professional, and were not on the team I had to work with if I got the job. They brought in their laptops, and were consistently working on their laptops and sharing something funny with each other. Very distracting to be talking to the wall while they looked at their laptops and grinned and chuckled all the while at the funny jokes they may have had on their computer. Out of the four people who were scheduled to be at the interview, 2 were present, one joined round 2 and a third person had joined at the last moment. 2 Indians and an American. The American guy did most of the talking and kept the interview process running. They were taking notes on laptop while interviewing. Questions mostly around myself and their own profiles, and company culture.
2. Sr Director and VP Ops: Actually a Sr/Principal Engineer and VP Ops turned up. These were really nice knowledgeable guys, asked me some generic questions, where I did not really know what the catch was, something like - What will happen if marketing is pushing for more and your team cannot achieve it. Will you commit to half baked product? And some specific questions. They understood I had no real agile experience.Appreciated my experience. Soft grill. They seemed to know their stuff well. Caught me for the fake I was. After everything, I liked them for their enthusiasm and a good discussion. The questions were mostly around agile as a process, my profile, cloud experience, team experience, etc.
3. Interview with VP - Well this was kind of watered down exercise and I felt did not have anything to do with the whole process. Just very generic discussions about the company, a little bit about myself etc.
4. Sr Product Manager - seemed capable. But did not have time. She cut down the interview time at the very start to half hour from the one hour schedule, because she had another meeting lined up. This was a decision maker, but I felt later, she already might have made up her mind. My energy level was down at this point because I had traveled from early morning from a different city and this was the fourth round without even a water break. This was, I felt, the most important interview that had been rescheduled to the end, and went down the drain.
I must say, I felt the interviews went well. And I never got the reply from the HR as to why I did not make it. Multiple reasons but glassdoor does not have space for it.
Advise :
You will be meeting a lot of people at the interviews. They want to make really sure they are going right with this.
Schedules are for keeps. The people who are scheduled could be different from the people who actually come.
They would like you to meet all employees. Keep up the energy level.
Try to have interviews with PM first. Try to have the highest ranking person first, and go down the route. Push for it. Because your energy level is going to go down with time. And if the most important person comes last, you dont have energy left at the end of 4 hours.
Be prepared for a fruitful discussion and lead it in case your other side does not have questions for you.
