Anthony (recruiter on staff at Qumulo) reached out to me on LinkedIn. I hadn't heard of the company before, but they looked interesting, so I followed up with a phone call. The phone call went well, and I got the impression that the recruiter was more technically savvy than most.
We decided that I should sit down and talk with their VP of engineering about them, me, and any questions that we might have. This was a refreshing second step, and I really enjoyed talking with Karim. I'm not sure who was really interviewing who in this meeting. I got basically all of my questions answered about the company, it's challenges, and what they were looking for. Leaving that meeting, I got the impression that I would really enjoy working with Karim.
Anthony followed up with me and we scheduled an in-person tech screen. The guy who I met for it was super chill, and we actually only spent about half the time on a coding question. It was pretty edge-casey. The rest of the time was spent talking about my experience and the systems that I've worked on. He impressed me mostly because of the questions that he asked in this stage; they demonstrated a real working knowledge of distributed systems combined with acute attention to any details that I provided him. He went out of his way to stay late and give me the opportunity to ask any extra questions that I had about him, the company, and the job.
Anthony followed up fairly quickly telling me that the tech screen went well and that they wanted me back for the full loop. The loop consisted of a design interview, a whiteboard interview, lunch (just lunch, not a lunch interview), a laptop interview, a fit interview, and I think one more? The interviewers were generally pretty good. They asked a couple questions reminiscent of others posted here, but nothing too terribly close. I generally got good vibes off of everybody, more so than at other companies. People seemed genuinely happy with the job, the company, and the work that they were doing.
At the end of the day, I sat down with Anthony again; he walked me through what would happen next, and told me that I could expect a preliminary yes/no decision that day or Monday, and that it would be followed with either an offer or a talk about where it went wrong shortly after. I didn't get home before I got the yes, and I had the offer in my email same-day. It was exactly what we had been talking about. No surprises, no funny business. I signed that weekend. I start next Monday and am pretty excited about it.