1 hour discussion with a product leader about my profile, aspirations, and the daily life of a Product Manager at Dadadog. The discussion was pleasant, and followed by a use case

Recruiters were awesome. The interviewers not so much. Extremely cold, no personal connection. It threw me off a bit because I laid out a process and they kept interrupting, which is fine, but then we would rat hold and did not have enough time to cover everything. The process felt robotic, I would say people seemed technical and smart on the surface, but difficult to connect with them. The best analogy is like ordering a Mcdonalds burger vs going to a small mom and pop. One other thing that left a bad taste in my mouth was this was in person, they did not cover parking, which I can afford but it shows they do not put attention detail to take care of the candidates. Overall, I would say a ok interview process. Not too difficult, all the answers are online.

A recruiter reached out to me. Process was relatively normal and yet abnormal - it was a recruiter screen, followed by a 1-hour HM interview, followed by an "onsite" consisting of 60 min each: 1) Engineering interview 2) Technical Interview 3) Analytical Interview 4) Case Study Interview. In total I spent a solid 6 hours just in interviews and 5-6 hours in prep. I even read their most recent annual and quarterly financial reports. So, you do invest a TON of time into the process, made even more difficult when you hold a full-time job as well, which I do. I was frustrated at the very end, because I was told that I nailed all the PM aspects of the job, but got dinged solely on the Technical Interview. I was literally asked to design the Netflix home page from a backend infrastructure standpoint. They apparently thought I wasn't vell-versed enough on the technical components of a recommendation engine. Well, duh! I am not an engineer. I completely understand their desire to ensure folks understand the technicals given the nature of the product. That's fine. In fact, I was an engineer for 4 years before becoming a PM and can talk very nitty gritty with my engineering team - they love that I can do that. But never in my product career have I ever needed to build the systems architecture myself. Ultimately, I think there was a mismatch between myself and DD. I feel grateful the decision resulted as it did, because I want to work for a company who grades me on my product chops and does not expect me to invent a backend architecture. Just a warning to those interviewing: make sure you want to enter a role where an engineering-understanding is weighed heavily before you invest the 10-12 hours of your time.