Sonar interview questions

Had several rounds starting from recruiter, hiring manager, on site tech interview, boss of hiring manager so far all good experience. Very cordial and professional. The next round is with the People and Culture team. It was supposed to be an hour and it went over. Lot of questions with no time to breathe. I came out of the session thinking I was in some psychotherapy with the therapist probing more than listening. The call concluded by saying we will get back to you and will give you feedback irrespective of the outcome. Fast forward 10 days, they decided not to move forward with the recruitment process (Understandable) and said if you would like we can provide feedback to which I responded and genuinely want to know. Never heard back from the Recruiter or from People and culture team. Why bother to ask if you cant follow up. Interestingly this is the team that sets the culture for the org.

The overall process took 2 months. They were moving from flat to hierarchical structure, so were looking for mulitple Engineering Managers. There were 5 steps, they sent a very detailed process description beforehand. I was rejected after step 3. These are all the steps: 1. HR remote interview, 30 min: Introduce yourself, how you managed your team before, etc. 2. Remote interview with head of engineering and an engineering manager, 45 min: Intro, current role, describe how you managed a difficult situation, what was the outcome, what was difficult in it? Questions from your side? 3. On-site technical interview with head of engineering and head of delivery, 2 hours: 1. hr: design Twitter (architecture); 2. hr: design ideal team structure for this development. They paid travel, accommodation and had a lunch together. Overall good experience, and thought it went well. I even asked for feedback during the interview and they said it is in line with what they expected. Still rejected after a week with "we had better candidates". (4. Culture fit interview - should be behavioural questions.) (5. CEO and salary expectations interview) Some Interesting things during the interviews/process: 1. After step 2, there was silence. I had to chase them after 2 weeks. But they were very responsive after that. 2. When I applied, there were only 2 Engineering Manager positions advertised on their website, and during the process I discovered that there is a new Engineering Director (higher level) role that better suited my experience. I have asked my HR contanct if I should apply separately or they can consider me for both levels during the process. She said that the hiring manager is the same for both positions and "I think that if he didn't mention it during your conversation [30 mins], then he thought that you would be better fit for the original position." This baffled me, seemed like for some reason she was dismissing my application for the second role and forcing me towards the first one. (Year end bonus target or they already had a candidate?) The hiring manager said on the interview is that the process is basically the same, and it is up to them where to put people in the org, but didn't discuss further. 3. From the answers to my questions, I figured that there is a considerable chaos ongoing at the company, and the product vision / goal setting processes are not very well defined. It is also part of the reasons why they are looking for more managers. Their focus on culture fit interviews also shows that they burned themselves before and want to avoid toxic people. (Which is good, but you may wonder who is still in the company from their bad experiences. :) ) It was also clear that there is little input coming from the sales/marketing organization for the backlog, so the developers will need to use their knowledge and instincts, they are not so much data driven. (This may also be OK to some extent, as they produce tools for developers.)