I was first contacted by a recruiter. After agreeing to apply for the position of software engineer, I was sent a online coding assignment, which I passed. Then I had 1 interview, focused mainly at leadership principles, past experience, situation handling, etc... This went well, and the interviewer was very friendly and the discussion went did flow nicely. During the last 15', we then moved to quick coding exercise. This felt really easy, to the point I was concerned! Then a second phone interview. This was a system design interview. The interview was a bit harder, with the interviewer asking me to take design decisions with vague requirements. I explained the the pros cons of each choice; maybe that's what he wanted to hear (but it was nit evident from the start). Then I moved to the 'onsite' via chime due to covid19. Once again, the 1st interview on the first day strongly focused on leadership skills, work ethic and practices. The 2nd was a technical interview. I did ask follow up questions, to clarify the ask, and I was developing pseudo-code as I was brainstorming the problem, always thinking out loud. First solution was not correct, so I changed the approach, with a bottom up algorithm. The time did run out before coming up with the final solution. Interviewer was a bit distant. 3rd was system design interview, which went well, with good communication with the interviewer. Next day, the planned interviews were postponed; my wife gave birth to our son. Eventually I did reschedule, with 4th & 5th interviews being leadership and a small coding task. After 2 days the recruiter called me saying that they thought I was technically weak. They felt I did not ask enough questions, and jumped quickly to implementation, without talking through enough. Thank god I did not go for an actual onsite; I would have missed my son's birth for nothing. It was a shock for me to hear the result. Given my personal circumstances I thought I did excellent.