Here's how my 1.5 month interview process went...
The first three interviews went really well, and were pleasant. The people running these interviews asked reasonable, relevant questions, attempted to get to know me and what I was looking for, and everything was looking & sounding great.
The fourth interview was a much dread panel with 5 people. For this interview they ask you to prepare slides for, and show a demo of their product. I spent 1.5 days going over their product, documentation, preparing slides, polishing everything out, logging the numerous bugs I encountered, and generally getting ready.
Glassdoor does not allow me to name the titles/positions of the people involved (outside of the C-suite), so I'll have to keep this next part generic.
Panel time. The demo goes fine, then the questions begin. The CEO and person #2 again ask very reasonable and relevant questions. Person #3 is someone I had extensively spoken to in one of the earlier interviews, so he keeps mostly quiet - that's fine, too. So far so good. Then the other two people handle the "technical" questions, and frankly, do an abysmal job.
One person seems fairly inexperienced and not prepared, but tolerable. The other is clearly more interested in making himself look good than getting to know what value I can bring to the team; his questions are not only not relevant to the position I'm applying for, but are borderline idiotic (ex. "what is the difference between Linux commands 'cat' and 'foo'?). I'm applying for a Sales Engineering role, not a Linux Admin! There is zero continuity in the line of questioning, they are jumping all over the place from one random subject to another, and give off the impression they've never interviewed anyone before.
I play along and get through the call. I receive an email with positive feedback, and a request for references. In my 18+ years of professional, full-time work (plus regular freelancing on the side) I've worked for (or with) with over 20 companies. Each company that asked for references did so as a final sanity check, and sent me an offer within a day or (max) two after the fact. Not Armory.
At Armory, my two contacts took turns giving me clearly BS excuses and promises to get back to me "in a few days" once or twice per week. From the time they spoke to my last reference, until the end of this process, they intentionally strung me along for 2.5 weeks. It became very clear that they were buying time and simply interviewing other candidates while keeping me on the hook as a backup.
I was an eager, hungry, extremely experienced and MORE than well qualified candidate, checking my email every 15 minutes for these 2.5 weeks, looking forward to doing my best work. In the end, they finally sent me a generic, bs-filled rejection email, culminating with "we simply decided to choose a different path."
Sink a month and a half into their process, waste your references' time, and they will choose "a different path" while stringing you along.
Their advertised values ("tenets") - Respectful Always, Be Selfless, Demonstrate Objectivity, Constructive Communication, Always Responsible, Be Curious" - would be better replaced with "Disrespectful," "Never communicating in the promised timelines," "Self-absorbed," "Non-transparent," and "Zero empathy for the Applicants."
What started off so well ended up being a complete joke. The only upside is that I found out their true colours before starting with them, and not after the fact.
