1. Recruiter screening - basic call to discuss your background and interests.
2. HM - Had a poor experience in this one. He did not ask me a single question on my background and experience. Instead, he asked me a coding question and said want to hire "rockstar coders". I discussed the approach but could not code it up completely. He still passed me to next round.
3. Codility 2 rounds - I passed this one. Expect string manipulation, arrays, sets and hashmap related questions. If you pass this one, you get to the next 3.
4. SRE - This went well and mostly about how did I manage reliability, fault tolerance, etc.
5. System design - Interviewer was very rude. He came about 7 minutes late. No apologies and directly jumped to the question which is fair considering saving time and while I am thinking about approach, he suddenly asks me "why did I apply when you nothing about storage written in your resume". I answered him as professionally as I could before jumping back to the question. I have been designing systems for past several years and my approach what you find in youtube videos (start with a data model and define core entities and build it up from there) but he did not like any of that. He kept arguing with me about nitpicky things and half the questions were not clear what direction does he want to go. After 20 mins, he went into "elder uncle" mode and said I will give you free advice and talked in abstract terms how to approach such questions. There're so many interesting things to cover: db design, capacity planning, sharding, caching strategies, etc and diving deep into each areas. He did not cover and ask any of that. Overall, he kept arguing and constantly nitpicking throughout the interview without giving me a chance to showcase skills to the best of my ability.
He has been a manager for 20 years and I got a feeling he never designed a system before and did more of "people" management. At Geico, he was given a elevated title of a "senior director" and so what can you expect? If he is this rude and direct to a person meeting first time, I can't imagine how people reporting to him must be feeling.
6. People skills : I gave answers in star format for this interview but the interviewer was a less experienced manager expecting some strange answers than the story, technical challenges and outcomes. He was more interested in my convincing skills, feelings of your colleagues, how you tackled disagreements, etc. Questions were on "feelings" and "communication" like in a dating context. At one point, I told him I am an engineer and not a sales person because my job is to present data, give opinions based on experience and drive things.
I got a feeling that Geico tech is a mess. Rather than going with a public cloud and optimizing costs there, they're building their own. Who builds their own these days including storage systems. Seems like they have hired people with big egos from big tech wanting to prove themselves than anything else. I can bet with the people leading this today that they are going to cancel all this effort within 2 years and go back to where it all started. Check reddit where it talks about stack ranking and toxic culture at Geico tech.
I will never consider Geico for insurance after going through some of the most disrespectful people. Can't trust them when you need them the most in your life.