I had an informal chat with the hiring manager (connected through Thumbtack recruiter) and really liked him (plus, multiple close friends think very highly of him), so I decided to proceed. This was followed 1-2 weeks later by 3 interviews, 2 of which were cases (very related to the business itself) and 1 of which was a pretty deep description and discussion of the analytical work I did at my previous job. About 1-2 weeks later, I had 7 more interviews. 3 of them were technical skills-based (SQL, hands on data analysis, software engineering interview) and 4 of them were much more oriented towards my leadership experience and style. I think I have an extremely discerning bar for excellence and to be completely honest, I was very impressed with >8 of my interviewers and pretty happy with the others. I was very excited about the potential to work here -- it totally would have been an honor! I was given a hands-on data analysis exercise. It was pretty easy in Excel, but I knew there was potential for them wanting to see R and/or Python skills, so I asked the interviewer what they preferred, to which he responded, "whatever you'd like." I used Excel, got zero push-back, lots of nods and "that makes perfect sense," throughout the interview. I walked out thinking I crushed it (not because what I accomplished in 45m was anything special, but because there was almost no negativity or follow-up or additional questioning from the interviewer). One piece of feedback I got from the hiring manager was, "we really wanted you to use Python or R," which would have been nice to get feedback on when I asked the question in the interview, and not during my ding call. Unfortunately, I didn't get the job offer. I had a 15 minute call (I appreciated the call, nonetheless) with the hiring manager and the reasoning he provided made little to no sense (flew in the face of a decade of career feedback that I have received on my strengths, and which would basically be the opposite view of anyone else that has objectively reviewed me in the past). Given how thoughtful everyone there seemed, I can only conclude that either (A) they weren't being honest (I find this hard to believe, as the people I spoke to seemed really genuine) because there was something they preferred not to or couldn't tell me or (B) that they really just over-focused on a single data point (where my read was vastly, vastly different than their read). I followed up and requested specific feedback and also offered to allay specific concerns. Got no reply. Overall, a *really* high caliber group of people, disappointing decision, and pretty poor relationship management/closure on the situation.