Five-round interview loop (Hiring Manager → Coding Screen → System Design → Coding Design → Hiring Manager). While most rounds were professional and went well, one technical interview was notably adversarial. The interviewer repeatedly attempted to reframe correct, independently derived solutions as if they required hints or guidance. This created a dynamic where the evaluation felt less about problem-solving ability and more about controlling the narrative of the interview. The final feedback stated that I “lacked sufficient hands-on experience” in the specific domain they were hiring for, despite my having 8+ years of direct, production experience in that exact area. This contradiction strongly suggests that the decision had little to do with actual technical depth and more to do with subjective interviewer alignment. For a company interviewing senior engineers, this process appears vulnerable to individual interviewer bias and post-hoc justification rather than consistent, merit-based evaluation. I would be cautious about assuming that strong performance or relevant experience will be assessed objectively across the loop. This process felt optimized to rationalize decisions after the fact rather than to identify the strongest candidate.