A recruiter reached out to me, and I thought I was a perfect match for the role based on the job description. My first round interview was a small little collaborative coding challenge I worked on with the interviewer; Leetcode style questions, but simple stuff. I did well on it and advanced to the final round, where I was given the choice between doing a take-home coding test or an extra interview as part of the final round. I chose the latter. I did a series of three 1-hour interviews. I thought they went mostly fine. Had some really great bonding time with one of the engineering managers in one of them. I ended up being rejected, without exactly understanding where some of the feedback came on and was grounded in. The frustrating part is, when I texted the recruiter about it, his feedback was CONTRADICTORY to what the rejection email said, leaving me very disappointed and confused. It's unfortunate because there were some really nice people I interviewed with, and the company/recruiter seemed eager to make the process transparent and easy to grasp ahead of time. But the rejection seemed like a big change of wind, and sort of undid some of the positive impression that I had.