I was interviewed by a CTPO for a Head of Product Operations role at Hostinger. The assessment task was ambitious - produce a consolidated board pack, investor deck, and market intelligence brief from 10+ team roadmaps. Closer to a week of real consulting work than a take-home exercise. I raised an eyebrow, but went along with it and invested serious time. The task had the potential to assess the right skills with a more structured and collaborative discussion. There are also approaches that could evaluate the same capabilities in a couple of hours rather than requiring 20+ hours of work. What followed is even worse. I’ve been interviewing for senior roles for over a decade, and this conversation with the CPTO of a billion-dollar company was, without question, the most baffling interview I’ve experienced. The CTPO opened the conversation by sarcastically questioning some of my skills that had nothing to do with the job itself, highly unprofessional, only to then criticise me for few details that holistically don't affect the overall outcome. It felt less like a senior-level discussion and more like being back in a 1990s classroom. I had assumed that kind of rigid, Soviet-era mindset was long gone in Lithuania, apparently not at Hostinger. Then he went to a prolonged baffling about something he highly disliked about the case. When I explained that the brief was designed to show concept and provoke discussion, and that I was genuinely happy to dig into the substance, the response was ignored. There was no curiosity about the ideas, why it was done the way it was. When I asked questions about product strategy and leadership at Hostinger, they were brushed off, really? For a senior candidate, the quality of a company's answers matters as much as the quality of theirs. For a Head of Product Operations role, the assessment should focus on: strategic thinking, product sense, execution judgement, and how a candidate approaches ambiguity. Halfway through the conversation I thanked the interviewer and left. It was the right call. A CTPO who cannot assess senior talent, dismisses substantive questions is not someone I would want to work with, regardless of the role or the company, which raises real questions about what product leadership looks like internally. A company of Hostinger's scale and ambition deserves better than this in how it assesses senior talent.