What a strange experience..
Initially, I was put in touch with the hiring manager. After a short conversation with them, I was asked to do an assignment. It wasn't anything super challenging, and definitely nothing above and beyond what one should be expected to be able to do for the role they were trying to fill. That took a few hours to complete.
Following that, there were multiple rounds of one-on-one interviews, a good portion of which had to be rescheduled due to them ignoring my time suggestions. The people I spoke with were awesome folks, and I genuinely got along with each one of them, but the technical nature of the questions was all over the place. I couldn't figure out any pattern or focus to what I was being asked, but rolled with it anyway. I assume they were interviewing me for one of a few available roles, but it seemed like we only scraped the surface of numerous disciplines without going into depth with any of them.
On the third or fourth (or fifth?) interview, I asked if they had seen the first assignment, and the answer was no. I had wrongly assumed that someone, at some point, would do a proper code review with me on that assignment. Instead, it seemed to be throw-away work adding no real value to the process. The interviewers weren't even aware that I had done one.
The last communication from them was "We'll get back to you by the end of the week." A week or two after that, I emailed the hiring manager, asking him to thank his team for their time, and asking for either an update or any feedback that could be helpful.
Crickets.
tl;dr:
1. They won't actually do anything with your coding challenge, so don't spend a ton of time on it
2. Saying "I am unavailable between X and Y o'clock in this timezone" may be interpreted as "schedule an interview during that specific block"
3. Interviewers definitely don't talk to each other.
4. They'll ghost you
