Databricks Fulltime Engineering Hiring Experience and Process Insights

Many posts describe Databricks' somewhat absurd processes, including references, background checks, interviewers, and the difficulty of interview questions. Here's another data point to share: TL'DR d

Many posts describe Databricks' somewhat absurd processes, including references, background checks, interviewers, and the difficulty of interview questions. Here's another data point to share: TL'DR didn't offer me an L5 offer because the DB hiring committee thought it was risky to hire me, given my long tenure at L5, despite providing four references and my performance rating over the past five years. My interview experience is in another post: https://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/thread-1146363-1-1.html I'm a Senior Business Engineer at a mid-sized company, with 8+ year-over-years and 5 years at L5. My long tenure at L5 was due to various reasons, but I believe the main reason was opportunity, changing teams, and having five different managers in the past five years. Of course, there were also personal reasons; I wanted to relax, and I had some hurdles. However, this year I felt it was too early to relax, so after six months of intense work and finding the team's situation less than ideal, I started preparing for interviews to see if I could get another chance. In early September, while going through emails and LinkedIn to find companies for practice interviews, I found several emails from different hiring managers at DB (probably because I had interviewed a few years ago but didn't get the job). I found one hiring manager had sent me two emails. Just then, I saw news about DB's new valuation, so I casually replied with congratulations and asked if I could use the previous valuation if I interviewed now. The hiring manager replied almost instantly, asking if I had other interviews and suggesting we try to expedite the process. They said if I

passed in September, I could use the previous valuation. The process was indeed fast-paced, and the hiring manager was very supportive, waiving the on-site interview and scheduling a virtual interview at my available time. They were also very attentive, preparing with me and replying to messages late at night and on weekends. I won't go into the details of the interview process. The hiring manager was very proactive throughout, jamming with me on references and presenting my hiring packet. Honestly, the complexity and workload were comparable to my daily work and past promo packets. Ultimately, the main point of contention was my tenure at L5. We jammed back and forth for a long time about how to present it. This made me very uncomfortable and speechless because it was an L5 interview, although it was written as 5/6, I knew it was just a script. Initially, I was just testing the waters, but I was genuinely moved by the hiring manager and lured by the promise of a full-fledged job, which made me commit to the process. Both the hiring manager and I spent at least several dozen hours on this. This included him finding four of my references, requesting my past performance reviews, and preparing my materials. Frankly, it wasn't fair to either of us. Perhaps this hiring manager shouldn't have interviewed me and made empty promises in the first place. Ultimately, I chose to believe him and his team—they wanted to hire me but couldn't convince the leadership. Anyway, this is truly a peculiar company. Every interviewer I spoke with throughout the process left a very good impression. My impression was that everyone genuinely wanted to hire, given the workload and the competition. Now, with the evaluation process like this, can they even find anyone? And will those who pass these tests still choose DB?