The process was basically the same as other Software Engineering described here, with 4 stages. Each with "substages". The interviewers were very nice people. Most of them enjoyed chatting and were cool about answering questions about working for Canonical.
The interviews, with the exception of the first one, took 1h each. The stages were something like this:
- Stage 0: The application review is internal and is just a pre-selection of CVs after the application.
- Stage 1: consisted of what they call a "written interview". I have been through this at least 3 times, in different processes. All of them, for some reason, asked about how I fared in STEM in high school and what I enjoyed about college. Come on now, this is on the brink of ridiculous. Well, then there are those psychometric and another automated evaluations that I did not have to repeat between processes. After those I had a short conversation with a member of the team I was applying for, 2 technical interviews and interview with a manager
- Stage 2: Interview with HR with really generic questions about teamwork, leadership, hobbies, and salary expectation. Interview with another manager. 1 more technical interview with roughly the same questions from the first tech interview. Things started to get confusing after this. I sent an e-mail to the hiring manager, asking something about the process. They replied with a confusing message, as if I was another candidate on another stage of the process. Ok, no big deal, life goes on.
- Stage 3: Interview with your highness, the almighty hiring manager, finally. After this stage, more confusion. After some time in the dark, I just sent a ping, asking if there was any news. The offer was in the approval chain. Cool, right? I was not even expecting information about an offer. I just wanted to know how long I would have to wait until the next information. Well, now with some expectation built up, more time in the dark, another ping and more reassurance.
My offer was about to come out. I even celebrated silently. The offer? After 2 more days: "I'm writing to let you know that I will not progress your application further". A scripted rejection text.
Frustrating, shocking, outrageous maybe? In the end, who cares if you are nice with the candidates if you end up treating them as cattle, really.
The time invested in the process was not negligible. My take on this is that the manager has either mistaken me for another candidate when replying (the reason for the first confusion in the first place); or they just regretted selecting me and withdrew the offer.