Distru Software Engineer interview questions

Started with an initial interview covering typical behavioral interview questions. At the end of this interview, I was told the next round would be a 1-1.5 hour technical interview including a discussion about my past work and live-coding technical questions. I was told after that the third round entailed being given access to their code base and live-coding a new feature. Unfortunately, this was not the case, and my second interview was just another conversation with a senior engineer that included some technical questions about my experience rather than a full technical interview. The difference between what I was told would be the interview process and what actually occurred was never acknowledged by them. Also at this second interview, I was told different information about what the total interview process entailed including that they have candidates complete a take-home exercise rather than having them attend a technical interview. I was told a lot of information in response to my own questions that seemed off and in my experience would probably not be disclosed by other companies to candidates during interviews. Overall, in my opinion, they seemed disorganized and unprepared. I asked questions about what training and onboarding for this position would be like and how they determine competitive salary when they are a remote company and individuals living in different areas are applying. I was essentially told in response to these questions that this is a brand new position, I would be the first person ever hired for this role, they have not come up with any plan for onboarding or training, and they haven't set a salary range for the position.

A phone call followed by a take home assignment, followed by a virtual on-site. The whole thing was very strange. Step 1: Phone screen. This was pretty standard. This stage was my first red flag. It's the CTO's first tech job, and lacks formal comp scie education. No matter. Nice enough guy. Step 2: Take home assessment was emailed to me. My submission was sent the following day. Initially I was told told they would not proceed, only to find that they had mixed my application with someone else (second red flag). Step 3: I was given permission to their git repo (3rd red flag) and a few days had a virtual on-site scheduled for 4 hours. I was asked to implement a simple feature while they watched. The assignment was fair and it was nice to get an impression of their code during the hiring process. After a total of at least 10 hours invested I was told my salary expectation was too high despite being lower than my current salary and having communicated it before the first interview. I was told that the salary would be possible had I worked for a FANG company or gone to an Ivy school. Bizarre for a CTO lacking a comp scie undergrad to criticize where I received my degree from.