Hopper Product Manager interview questions

Applied online and was contacted the same week for an interview with the recruiter. Initial phone screen was great and they asked me to complete a homework assignment and return within a week. I spent a week working on the assignment, created a presentation and sent it to the recruiter but never heard back from them. Contacted the recruiter a week later and she said the team would review and get back to me that week but did not hear from them again. Very disappointing experience to put that much work into an assignment and never receive feedback.

The preliminary interview was with HR. The HR associate was not able to articulate much about the nature of the role and was misinformed about the team structure/composition and tools used by the team (as I found out later). It was understandable given she was apparently new to the company and those are questions more suitable to clarify when meeting with the hiring manager anyway. But I felt that I lacked data to evaluate the fit at this point. After the preliminary HR interview, I was asked to do a homework assignment with questions about strategy and data analysis. It is odd to be expected to invest sizeable amount of time to be triaged when I have not had a chance to discuss the role with the hiring manager to do my own triage of Hopper and the team. 
I decided to proceed with the assignment anyway and passed to the next round with the hiring manager so that I get to evaluate whether the role and the team would be a right fit for me. Instead of meeting the hiring manager as the HR associate stated, I was interviewed by a peer of the role within the team. I asked him about the challenges of remote teams (vs collocated teams), contrasting his previous job and current work at Hopper. He couldn’t articulate the nuances about level of communication and effectiveness between the two setups. Then I asked him about the team and specifically if and how they approach “iterative development”. He didn’t understand what iterative development means… Upon further discussion, he knew about “Sprints”. As we talked, it became a clear red flag for me for a product manager/owner who knows the lingo but do not understand the mindset and reason behind the SDLC framework. He was not able to associate those actions/outputs with the outcomes the framework aims to achieve. I also challenged him about a solution he had previously implemented. He didn’t quite like being asked questions that challenge the status quo and provoke out-of-the-box thinking. These are usual questions I dive into to filter out those who really know what they are talking about and those who just know the buzz words. By the end of the interview, it seems likely that the product management team makeup is relatively junior and it is unlikely for me to be the right fit with Hopper’s current hiring strategy. It is worth noting that Hopper puts someone with only a few years of work experience to interview someone with 2 decades of relevant experience for the position in the first round of team member interview (It makes more sense for subsequent rounds). It seems that Hopper has more room to optimize their hiring process and strategy. Besides the need to better identify first-line interviewers for a candidate, it is also quite presumptuous of a company to expect a senior candidate to invest a few hours of time in a homework assignment that requires strategy and data analysis prior to meeting the hiring manager. The assignment is more suitable after the candidate has met with the hiring manager and evaluated the fit. After all, an interview is a two-way street (a mindset that companies like Shopify really engraved and perfected in their hiring process). One positive comment about the HR coordinator. Because I have 2 other offers pending my response, I asked her to expedite my interview with Hopper. She kindly and promptly pushed my interview ahead in the schedule. It was much appreciated. 
 Overall, the interview process was pleasant. The assignment questions were great to triage a candidate, just not in the right place of the hiring process if you are hiring more senior candidates.