One of the more disconcerting series of interviews I have ever encountered. The first interview was a phone interview with a recruiter. Much more detailed than I expected. He was very knowledgeable about process, technology and various operational methodologies. I was very impressed. Very polite, courteous and progressional.
A second interview was scheduled with the corporate COO. Took weeks to get that scheduled but I understand the challenges of finding time in a COO's busy schedule. It was via Skype and she didn't seem to know how to use it and kept getting disconnected, at one point she had to call someone for help. I was embarrassed for her but once she was back on she seemed too cool for school, almost annoyed that she had to be in the interview and kept name dropping. Didn't ask me a whole lot of questions. It was very uncomfortable.
I came away from the interview not feeling great about the company and was surprised that a third interview was scheduled with, presumably, a peer in the Austin office. He was nice enough and the only one who asked 'tough' questions. Mostly about corporate finance. They were clearly looking for a person with a strong finance background, which was not my experience. It lasted about an hour. I came away feeling like the company didn't know where it was going. None of the interviewers seemed aligned on the job responsibilities. And were all pretty loosey-goosey, looking for some intangible cool factor that the other didn't know about.
At the time they had just merged with a mobile company and KKR was clearly looking to sell them or change the business.
I think once, they were the coolest kids on the playground and could rely on their relationship with Apple to bring them cache but now with so many other product design shops and innovation labs opening up, competition is fierce and they just don't seem to have it together anymore.