Six Rounds with LangChain. Then This.

2025.11.15
HR reached out by email and set an interview for 11.19, then moved it to 11.24 for their own reasons.

2025.11.24
Round one was a standard HR screen, half an hour. They would share my résumé with the whole team and decide from feedback whether to send a take-home.

2025.12.2
The take-home arrived at eight in the morning. I turned it in at eleven that night. Three people on the team reviewed it; call that round two. A LangSmith-related project.

2025.12.10
HR wrote that the assignment had gotten positive feedback, and booked system design and a project review.

2025.12.18
Round three, system design, one hour. I did not know it well. Round four, project review, half an hour, walking through the take-home. Two hours later, an email to meet the VP the next day.

2025.12.19
Round five with the VP of Engineering, half an hour, ordinary behavioral questions: projects I had done, the largest challenge. I thought this was the last round, and waited.

2025.12.22
HR emailed that there was still one more, after the holidays, the week of January 5.

2026.1.5
They scheduled round six and asked when I was free the next day.

2026.1.6
Round six with a founding engineer, half an hour. They went through the résumé projects more closely than the VP had.

2026.1.20
I followed up by email. An HR text. No.

I was eating lunch in the Natural History Museum in Washington, D.C. I had a strawberry croissant and a hot chocolate. I opened the message, saw it, and drank another sip. Too sweet. A huge shark hung in the hall. I leaned back and looked at it. I wondered what would happen if it came alive. It would probably eat me as a snack. And then?

I was not surprised, or angry, or sad. I felt nothing. I only looked at the shark. Its black eye was bright, as if it were looking at me too. The hot chocolate went down my throat with a sandy sound. Children laughed in a clutter of noise. Sunlight came through the glass in the ceiling.

Let it be.