Fanatics Software Engineer interview questions

Had the exact same experience as someone else here. Had initial screening, then leetcode technical interview, then 2 back to back behavioural interviews, then finally an in-person system design interview. All went relatively smoothly and I recieved a "congratulations" email just a few days after the final round saying I had passed the final interview, but they still need to make final decisions. I even got a call from my HR contact the following week basically saying an offer was "very likely" and I should expect to recieve it by the end of the week. That was pushed another week. Then another. Eventually she invited me to a call with a hiring manager, which was described as a "final step". This call was basically a casual chat with the manager, which I thought went well. Then another week passes. I ask her again for updates, and she hits me with the generic "at this time we've decided to move forward with other candidates". Extremely frustrating after over a month of waiting, and lots of false hope. Also, it was extremely weird to attend the "candidate mixer" the evening before the final interview, where they treated us with free food and drinks, and talked to us as if we were already hired.

The interview was in 4 different stages. 1. Technical coding round (Remote) - 1 hr The interviewer will ask you to complete a coding question on one of the coding platforms while being monitored. It was a reasonably simple question and was not at the level of leetcode medium or hard. 2. Behavioral Interview - 2 rounds of 1 hr each (Remote) Questions regarding your strengths, weaknesses, "explain about a time you ..." type questions. They have two 1hr rounds for this which seemed excessive as most of the questions are repeated and for me it was back to back. I felt like if both the interviewers were present on the first call, we could have saved both us a lot of time. 3. System Design (On-site) They asked me to come to the Dublin office and attend a system design interview. You will have to complete it on a whiteboard while being monitored by a senior developer. Back and forth with the developer is allowed and they try to guide you through the process. Up until this point everything was smooth. They had asked all the candidates to come up to Dublin two days previous to this interview round so as to "mingle" with the other candidates. This was really weird because you were talking and having drinks and food with people who were basically your competitors. I had never experienced something like this before and everyone I talked to at this event said the same thing as well. It felt like they were trying to overcompensate for having issues with the company culture in the past. After the system design interview, the very next day I get a congratulatory email saying that I had successfully passed all the interview rounds and they would soon reach back to me to talk to me about the next steps. However they also mentioned that until I receive the offer letter, nothing is set in stone. This was also extremely weird because it basically said that I passed all four rounds of interview but we don't know if we can offer you a position yet. The recruiter reached out to me and told me that she'll let me know the decision within one week. One week became two weeks, two weeks became 3 weeks. After a month of the final interview I again reached to the recruiter via email and she basically replied with a standard rejection template. This was pretty infuriating as they strung me along for a month and didn't even have the decent to give any feedback on why I was rejected.