I went through several rounds of interviews, including an exploration round lasting one hour, two interview vector rounds each lasting one hour, a discussion round similar to the first round lasting one hour, a take-home random assignment in system design, and a one and a half hour discussion with a team of four. I was then asked to come in person for a two hour meeting, including travel time. During this meeting, they mentioned that they thought I had stated a different salary than what I had actually stated, which felt like arm-twisting or cheap tactics. Eventually, I have received another call to schedule another call with CTO, but I asked them to roll out an offer first as mentioned before by them. The entire process took a month, and while it was my first job offer in this phase, it was frustrating and negative.
Now, important is that each round was conveniently placed one week after the other. There was no point of fourth round being similar to the first, uncalled fifth round followed with discussion with 4 team members basis, who were asking me implementation questions in the tech spec document. Prior to this uncalled tech spec assignment I was told that we want to know how you fit into the culture. That's even more mind boggling because the panel consisted of guys with 2-3 years experience in frontend team. I must say that this is a very unique way to cheque the culture fitment of a lead engineer. I hope they file a patent for this innovative and unique process.
If this is not enough then they constantly kept calling u until the date of joining neared that if I would be joining. They kept asking if you are in another city, could you come and visit our other city office. When you meet a decent gal ona first date and she keeps on nudging that if you would marry me after few dates, then you gotta say "No", right? Actually z you are supposed to run backwards with double the speed with which you came to meet her. So that's what I did once I received other offers.