Beware of companies that drag you through 7 hours of interviews just to ghost you

Just wanted to share a frustrating experience I had with a famous Indian payment startup. I spent 7+ hours across multiple interview rounds, and everything seemed to go really well—including the final managerial round, which lasted 2 hours (instead of the scheduled 1). The manager deep-dived into my projects, discussed how my MLE background could help their team streamline ML feedback loops, and even talked about what kind of work I’d be doing.

Before the managerial round, the recruiter told me feedback from the tech rounds was positive. So I genuinely thought things were on track.

Here’s what the process looked like: • Machine coding – 1 hr • Machine coding explanation – 1 hr • DSA – 1 hr • LLD – 1 hr • HLD – 1 hr • Managerial – 2 hrs

After all this, I received a cold, automated rejection email—no context, no feedback, and complete silence from the recruiter who had been super responsive earlier.

Not even sure what to improve anymore. If everything goes well and this still happens, how do we grow?

Just sharing so others know—it’s not always about your performance. Sometimes, the system just fails you.