Received an email from HR to scheduled the first 30-minute phone interview with hiring manager. The hiring manager forgot to call on time and rescheduled for the next week. The night before the phone interview (around 10pm) the hiring manager sends me an email with an online coding test to do in 2 hours. The next day she calls and asks if I had time to do the coding test overnight; she continues with some basic behavioral questions, and finally asks a programming question that would require at least 20-30 minutes to solve. As I already knew the answer, it took me 10 minutes to explain and solve it. Right after that, she mentions that she had no time left and if I had any questions. I also agreed to do the coding test later that day which went excellent.
Next week I received an email from someone saying that they want to "bring me in" for an on-site. After a few minutes of curiosity I realized that it's from Workday; there was no company name of other identification mentioned in the email, other than the sender's email address being "**@workday.com". He even signed the email only with his first name. It took them a week to schedule and finalize the on-site interview and that also included signing an employment application (asking if you're legally authorized to work in the US and so on). The schedule for the onsite interview was like: 9-9:30am with the hiring manager, 9:30am to 12pm null, 12pm to 1pm lunch and 1pm to 3pm panel interview. No information about why this huge gap between 9:30 to 12.
At the day of the interview, everyone seemed quite friendly and helpful. The hiring manager asked a few behavioral questions and informed me that between 9:30am to 12pm there will be a timed test to finish. When that was over, between 1pm and 3pm I would have to present my solution to the team and answer multiple questions or do modifications on the code. That's exactly what happened. I started doing the test, while at the office next there was a lot of noise; concentrating was quite hard. Finally I managed to finish the test on time, which seemed to impress them. Afterwards, we went for a quick lunch with the team; they were all quite friendly. Finally, at the panel interview I had to present my solutions and answer probably more than 50 questions both on the code and technical. At around 3pm we managed to finish the panel interview and they literally disappeared after shaking my hand. The hiring manager walked me out and mentioned that the HR would be in contact with me, and that I did well.
A week passed, no contact from the HR so I sent an email asking for an update. The next day I receive a call from the hiring manager, asking for my current visa status and a response from HR stating that "we're still trying to figure out internal stuff, but the team really liked you! I'll update you asap." At that moment I was sure that the interview went excellent.
Another week passes, no update while already having 2 other offers waiting for my decision, so I send another email to both the manager and the HR. The HR responds that "unfortunately we couldn't offer a position, but the team was really impressed by your performance. No specific reason, just not a match here." A few moments later, the hiring manager calls and apologizes as she thought the company had updated me. She also ensures me that I did excellent and she did everything she could to hire me, but the policy of the company is very strict on not hiring people on F-1 visa that would require H-1B sponsorship, even though I had just started my OPT and I could keep it for a total of 3 years with the STEM extension.
It turns out that it was a waste of time, as when there is such Visa policy, all the HR should be aware of that and ask the candidate before scheduling any interview. On the other hand, I'm glad it ended like that so I can consider other companies.