The process started oddly and then went quiet. Two days after he applied, the hiring manager called him out of the blue - he was mid-Elden-Ring - and the hour-long screen felt natural. A Zoom with the person he would replace went well too. Then the company ran him through the office in a marathon: eight different people, one after another.
Then silence. Ten days passed; he followed up and was told a decision was coming soon. Nothing. When the offer letter finally landed by email - almost a month after the office marathon, no call, no apology - he had already accepted a better-paid job elsewhere. He declined.
The company's reply said they had rejected several good applicants to choose him, that they had raised the pay to his number, and that he was leaving them in a bind. The offer letter, for the record, had misspelled his surname.