First I met with the recruiter, Kari, who was a top notch professional.
Next I met the hiring manager who moved me along to a panel of three more individual interviews.
This is where things get messy. The first person I interviewed with happened to be a very condescending, very confusing person to speak to. I was so thrown off by this experience. I had a guy basically mansplaining me while also admitting he wasn’t the expert in my field. It was confusing and unprofessional and turned me off of the whole idea of working for Upwork. He cut into the time of my next interview, and I was then given the feedback after all this that I was the unprofessional one.
Even if I had gotten an offer from this company, there is no way I’d take it. The small sample of Upwork employees I met included one toxic person that made me worry that there would be more people at the company like this person.
I want to say that after I gave all this feedback to the recruiter, she took it very seriously and said the person would be removed from the panel. But I think the damage has already been done. It will be hard to get a great person in that position if this person is making applicants feel awful. And it was confirmed I was the third person to make this complaint. So I feel bad for the hiring manager for this position.