[sfotm]

Can confirm that this is how it worked out for me just a few weeks ago. Interviewed for SWE II for a day, was told that feedback was trending positive, and spent ~4 hours of personal time prepping for and participating in fit calls.

Then got and excited call from my recruiter and was told I'd get an offer and that there was a match for one of the teams I interviewed for. The catch? Downleveled to SWE I, despite saying earlier in the process that I would not take it for career development and salary range reasons.

They were willing to set up another round of interviews to get more data, but at some point you just have to call it. End-to-end, this took around a month and a half. This was with my positive references allowing me to skip the phone screen.

I've had positive experiences interviewing with Microsoft and Amazon, no experience with other big tech.