I was recently interviewed for a position on a team in Seattle. I was pretty excited up until I met the hiring manager. Started the interview by asking me what position I am interviewing for and then asked me if i would be willing to accept a lower position. i.e. straight up asked me if i will be OK accepting a senior position while interviewing for a principal position. This gets worse - even asked me what salary range I was quoted by the recruiter. This person then went on to open his laptop and told me he needs to check if the budget allows for it DURING THE INTERVIEW!!!. I am not sure how i kept calm through this; guess it's because it was an interview and I was stunned. This guy then asked me how i will write a directory enumeration; did not understand difference between enumeration and read and kept on being aggressive about questioning. Most of the rest was about how I will test it and how i will deal with a tester. I could clearly figure that this guy didn't have a developer background. I must say that this was the worst interview I have had and I hope this doesn't repeat. Rest of the interviews were as professional as they could have been, so I didn't bother much about it until I heard a no from the recruiter. You can imagine that I was very curious as to this nightmare of a human's background and lo and behold, a long stretch of short stints as a tester in a bunch of Seattle companies. I know bay area companies hire these 'people managers' that have no technical knowledge regarding the product, but want to be a cross between project managers and technical leads, but this is a horrible outcome for both, the company, since they are highly unsuited for the job, both technically and as managers, and the the managers themselves, since that is no way to progress in your career - making technical decisions because you are a lead while demoralizing technically smarter people because they are reporting to you all the while knowing that they are a better fit for your job than you are. Every company, small or big, end up making bad hiring decisions. I think the people manager positions with barely any technical background are definitely avoidable though.