Recruiter reached out to me. After the initial screening, they gave me a take-home assessment with 25 questions, that took up about 6 hours of my time. Then the interview with the hiring manager, which went well. Then a coding round with an engineer, which I solved in less than 50% of the allocated time - there was an IDE issue which even the interviewer didn't know how to solve, and he kept providing random suggestions, which were obviously incorrect. But in any case, I was moved to the final on-site round - which is where the circus began.
A couple of days after that, the recruiter called and said that the principal position is taken, and I can only be considered for a senior DS position with lower pay. I agreed, but the following day, they came back with the need for another penultimate round - which I agreed to (which I was counting the number of red flags). And then the next day, I got a template rejection email. From on-site final round to rejection -- with no other rounds.
