It’s becoming common for some Silicon Valley startups to treat interviews as free consulting, and Celestial AI is no exception. From the start, they clearly knew from my resume that I wasn’t the exact hire they wanted, yet the conversation centered on extracting details about how large organizations operate — tools engineers use, workflows, cross-functional collaboration and methods. It felt less like an evaluation and more like mining for playbooks they haven’t built themselves. Using candidate time this way is unprofessional and transparent.