I applied for staff through a referral. Went through phone screen/virtual onsite which was average difficulty. After the onsite I was told there was a chance of downlevel based on interview feedback. I was asked if I wanted to continue with downlevel to which I reluctantly agreed. After this I was asked to do 4 hr take home coding exercise and asked for 3 references. After talking to all the references, I got a call from recruiter that the hiring committee thought I did not meet the bar. This is by far most humiliating experience in my interviewing career, why tag along a candidate to do take home and ask for reference checks if I did not meet the hiring bar. After all this, the recruiter did not even have the courage to give a detailed feedback and babbled through the call. No respect to candidate's time. I understand this can happen just to one candidate out 100, but there is no room for such process.

Phone screen was a simple software architecture interview. The main loop consisted of four rounds: a coding round, an architecture round, a system programming, and a behavioural interview. Technical questions were domain specific. Either you know it, or you don't. The worst part? The recruiter ghosted me for 2 weeks and only replied when I followed up.