A recruiter reached out to me about this role. Chatted with them, and then I was passed on to the engineering manager.
This went fine, discussed the usual topics - prior roles, services used, etc.
The first red flag was when I asked them about the team's growth, and they mentioned that just earlier in the day she'd been surprised by layoffs being announced in the middle of a meeting (for their own team). So that's a concern, if leadership doesn't even know it's coming down the pike.
Anyway I was moved on to the next round which led to the second red flag.
I was ghosted by the next person I was scheduled to meet with. This was 7am PT. Strongly considered just moving on, but the recruiter talked me into giving it another go.
This time they showed up. But this person made no apology for ghosting. This is unacceptable, I've been in tech over 20 years and I wouldn't treat someone like that. Third res flag. If you get ghosted and receive no personal apology, I'd strongly recommend not trusting an employer who would do this.
Unfortunately this person also seemed to be unaware of the role the recruiter put forth (really the fourth red flag at this point), clearly hadn't read my resume beforehand as he came in with questions that would have been answered if he'd given it a cursory glance, and finally I figured out he was interviewing for a low-level support job (the job duties provided by the recruiter and job title did not reflect this being an end-user type of support role). This person was barely intelligible, and really needs to work on their speaking skills. Clearly an outsourced manager (the recruitment service was as well). I ended the interview early.
So there you have it. Don't trust external recruiters, especially for larger companies that can afford to in-house them. Lesson learned.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Discuss prior experiences and previously used technologies