I had never been ghosted after a final round interview before, but here we are. The process started well. I received a prompt reply from the hiring manager after submitting my materials and was scheduled for a phone screen the following day. The screen was standard and ended with the recruiter telling me I was well qualified and that they would be setting up an in-person interview with the founder, who was one of Optima's clients. I drove to their office for the meeting. When I walked in, the founder stared at me for what felt like a very long time before I could shake their hand. For context, I present androgynously and have a gender neutral name. They appeared visibly surprised throughout the entire interview. On a couple of occasions the founder compared me to their teenage children when discussing AI and automation. I have a decade of experience scaling operations in high growth tech environments. At the end I asked when I could expect to hear about next steps. They laughed loudly and said "We haven't even talked about that, we don't know if you'll be moving on." I assumed they misheard me, thanked them for their time, and left. I followed up with both the founder and the hiring manager to express my appreciation. Over the following two weeks I reached out two more times to check on status. I never heard back from either of them.