I saw this on an online job board. The job post was actually for a Distinguished Engineer, and I thought it would be a chance to get a taste of a super high-level IC role, a career jump of sorts, and I was fine taking a pay cut for that, so I applied. The recruiter then told me that their Distinguished level is calibrated against Google/Meta L8 ICs, which is two levels above my current scope, so it wasn't really realistic. They said I'd probably only get Staff, maybe Senior Staff at most, and the pay would be low too, so I wasn't that motivated anymore. But I still wanted to interview, just to get some practice.
At a lot of companies, the first round for a senior IC is an HM screen, mostly behavioral questions, but Geico's was only thirty minutes. The hiring manager was a manager from another team. She opened by asking what I was looking for, and I said I'd originally wanted to level up, but the recruiter had told me that wasn't realistic, though I'd seen that the team on the JD was in a domain I'd worked in before and had a lot of experience with, so I still wanted to interview. At that point the manager asked: if you can't level up, do you only want to work on the team from the JD? She said that team was already filled, and she was actually from a different team. It was already pretty awkward at this point. After that she mostly had me talk about my highest-impact project, asked a bit about the details and my scope, and then asked a behavioral question about how I handle disagreement.
Then it was basically over, but she suddenly said she wanted to talk for two more minutes. She asked again why I wanted to join Geico, knowing that my current company pays more than Geico does, and whether it was purely because I wanted the team from the JD or a level bump. If I couldn't get that team and couldn't level up, would I still want to join? I was pretty speechless at that point, and just scraped together a few reasons to say yes, I'd still go. Honestly, at that point I really didn't want to, partly to save face on both sides, and partly because I figured more interview practice couldn't hurt.
A week and a half later they told me I didn't pass. I'm guessing they figured I really wasn't going to take the offer anyway.
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