I applied for a director-level position. The interview process consisted a total of 6 interviews. 4 phone and 2 in person. Overall, everyone I talked to was mostly positive but the overall theme was that they were suffering from serious growing pains from doubling their size every year for the last 3 years. The growing pains were evident at every stage of the interview process. The first 3 interviews were mostly about my background, 1 by a recruiter and 2 by the hiring manager and I was invited into their offices for a 1:1 with the hiring manager. I showed up for my 1:1 interview with the hiring manager a little early but no one seemed to know what I was supposed to be doing there. He was really late (45 minutes) and no one could find him or knew what to do with me. He apologized, he'd been stuck in a meeting and couldn't get out and thought someone had told me. We talked a lot about my background and how I would position support. He expressed concern that he and I thought too much alike and wanted someone who would be different which was interesting since he did most of the talking and all I did was nod in agreement. He did tell me that they had over 1000 applicants and I was one of 16 they were bringing in to narrow the selection down to 6. About a week later I got a mail that I had been selected as one of the six they were bringing in for the final rounds of interviews. In a follow-up phone call the hiring manager outlined that the goal was to put together a presentation detailing my "Vision" for how I would build the ideal Support department. There were a number of specific items he wanted covered (What did success and the organization look like and what are the roles) but this was designed to be a "blue sky" exercise to get at my core "values". The second part of the presentation was to develop a 30-60-90 day plan for how I would start. At the end of the call he made the remark "If nothing else, I'll have lots of good ideas to steal". There was a bunch of confusion about how this presentation was going to be delivered. The recruiting coordinator scheduled me to come in and then followed up the next day to say it was going to be delivered by phone to 3 separate people (one remote, 2 at HQ), one hour each, later that week. They didn't have me send the presentation to anyone so I ended up walking through it 3 separate times for 3 functional areas of the company (Sales, Engineering, and Support (oddly, someone who would ultimately report to me)). The presentations seemed to go well and I was invited in for the final round of interviews. I met first with the recruiting coordinator who had me confused with someone else and asked me for a bunch of information I had already provided her via email. She was super nice and felt really bad saying she was super busy. The schedule they sent me from the day before had also changed and they substituted a couple of people. My first interview was with the EVP of Sales (the hiring managers boss). She apologized that she didn't have a lot of time and wanted to touch the highlights of my presentation. I went through some of my slides on paper (their computer wasn't set up). She asked a couple of questions but it was pretty clear that she wasn't interested in "blue sky" and wanted concrete answers for how I would organize and grow the existing support organization. She thanked me after 45 minutes, apologized that she had to go and excused herself. My second interview was with a manager from sustaining engineering. She was super nice and really seemed to care about her job and the customers. She asked a ton of questions about how I would work with her group and the importance of collecting good data. We were scheduled for 30 minutes and talked for 40 while we waited for the next person to show up. At that point the hiring manager came in and told me his boss (that I had met with earlier) had decided I was "too innovative" for Tableau and that she wanted a more traditional enterprise support model. He was super nice about it and let me ask questions about their decision. My only comment was to say that he specifically had asked me not to do that kind of a presentation.