Shield AI Engineer interview questions

Zoom call with recruiter, interview with hiring manager, take-home coding round, then on-site interview (4 hours). Overall a great experience. On-site was more focused on team and culture fit rather than solving random technical problems. Technical interview was conversational and didn't require coding on the spot. Also had a 1 hour presentation of past relevant work. Everyone was super nice and the whole process was very transparent.

Incredibly respectful and nice employees, megalomaniac CEO. Before I arrived, I was sent a self-published article by the CEO, on Shield's website, to review. The article was about the questions the CEO would ask during the interview. The questions were standard. I reviewed these and had responses for all of them. I arrived and was greeted by the hiring manager in the morning. Started off my interview with a presentation on my work. As the day went on I met other engineers who I would be working with. Lots of interesting questions and great conversation with everyone who worked there. Super standard. Was really comfortable and having an OK time. At the end of my interviews with the employees, I was told to hang tight. They didn't know which C Level executive would come in next. I wait five minutes. A younger guy comes in, and without introducing himself, sits down. He expects me to know him and recognize his face. I don't. First bad sign. I eventually figure out that he is, in fact, the CEO. He starts asking me his canned questions from the website article. "What does a team need to succeed?" I provide him with a response, which he interrupts and disagrees with. I provide him a second response "people with no ego". He asks me if I have an ego. "Yes, everyone has an ego". From here, I cannot believe what I heard. He goes on to tell him that his CTO "has no ego---and hes the third best---no the first best---in his field within the USA." He describes the CMO: "She has no ego, but is a two times NYT best selling author." "Our other exec, he's a retired navy admiral and did x, y, and z. He has no ego." Sounds like people have some egos over here... More pointed questions. More active disagreement with each one of my responses. He insults my work ethic based upon the number of hours I work, and tells me that kindness is an optional guiding principle of the company because "dictators still got things done". Whoa. Got out of there and didn't look back. There are other reviews like this on here---pay attention to them.