After a chat with recruiter, we had two phone interviews, then the onsite.
Recruiters were nice people, but they give ZERO information about what the interview is gonna be about. They say "it's gonna be a mix of technical and case study," but that's pretty much it. I'm not sure if it's the company policy to hide such info from the candidates (in that case, I cannot fault recruiters) or not, but I've never seen a company where recruiters were this clueless about the interview structure. They pretty much threw out the onsite interview time and 6 interviewers I'll be meeting like only few days before the onsite interview (it was just hey~ u'll have interview from X AM to Y PM, and these 6 people are names of your interviewers type of e-mail, zero info about who's gonna ask what types of questions), but since it overlaps with lunch time, I expected the one of the interviews would be lunch interview, but there was none. The recruiter didn't bother to tell me that, so I was hungry throughout the interview process.
The gap between two phone interviews and onsite interview was gigantic. I don't know if it was just me or that's the general case with Adobe data scientist interview. In the first phone interview, I was given a very easy question that can be solved via hash map, and the second phone interview was super basic ML and case study that involves t-test.
However, the onsite interview was MUCH MUCH more technical. They asked graduate-level stat questions (something in the ballpark of sketching the steps of PLS and stating conditions for convergence of Newton's method or not), and the case study questions were SUPER SPECIFIC to what that team was doing.
Overall, 4 of 6 interviewers were nice people, but the other 2 were not, especially the last one. One told me that I don't look good, and I told him "sorry, I'm a bit hungry," and then he was like "you should've eaten some food during lunch interview, who was your lunch interviewer?" I told him they didn't include lunch interview, then he went on to boasting about he once had a time when he didn't get any sleep and food and still did fine on the interview and got an offer: it was pretty obvious that he was insinuating I should do the same. And then he went on to saying my job experience doesn't seem to match the level of position I was applying, so I should seriously consider taking a level down, so I was like "eh.. ok."
However, it was really the last one that threw me off. From the beginning, he had this "why the hell should I be here" face, and then quickly introduced himself (starting from where he went for his undergrad, which I was not even curious about) and then didn't even ask me to introduce myself. That's fine, but then he took out a piece of paper, which seemed to be my resume, and then said the same thing that the other not-so-nice guy said: my job experience doesn't seem to match the level of position that I applied.
First, I didn't apply to that position. Recruiter contacted me through linkedin and then sent me the position and asked me to apply for it, which I did. It was kinda annoying to hear the same thing twice, especially from a seemingly rude man, but I said ok.
Then he asked a super specific case study question, to which I gave my best guess, but then he laughed (not for long, but for a very brief period), and gave me one hell of a condescending look and said "no," and then moved on to next question.
Usually, when I interview someone, if they don't answer correctly first time, I give them some hints and give them another chance. This guy just scoffed and then moved on to next question.
Then the interview was over. I went to airport, super-hungry, ate two hamburgers and then flew to my home. A week later, miraculously (I thought I was done after the last interview), I somehow got an offer, but as expected, a level below what I applied for, and the offer was very bad (considering tax, price level, even lower than what I'm currently making), and on top of that, my interview experience was far from good. I politely rejected the offer.
