Axon Software Engineer Interview Experience — Rejected After a Behavioral-Heavy Hiring Manager Screen

I applied on a whim through LinkedIn Jobs. The first round was an HM screen, mostly chit-chat and behavioral questions. It wasn't the hiring manager for the role I actually applied to, but the manager of a larger group — maybe our personalities just didn't click, because I got rejected. Here are the questions I remember:

• Why did you choose Axon?
• Walk me through your career path — what's driven you to where you are today? What's your plan for the next five years?
• How does your work help the customer? What feedback loops or metrics do you use to measure the impact?
• What's the org structure of the bigger group? What are your responsibilities and how much do you collaborate across teams?
• How many people report to you directly and indirectly?
• What's your current ratio of time spent writing code versus doing leadership work?
• AI-driven development: what have you done with it, what challenges did you run into, and how do you ensure quality?
• AI speeds up everyone's work, but does that have any impact on long-term maintenance/operations?
• The biggest positive impact your work has had on a customer in past projects.
• The biggest technical mistake from past projects, and what you learned from it.
• In a cross-team project you led, did you address any eng-excellence issues? How did you deal with pushback?
• Any experience mentoring people?
• Another eng-excellence question: when did you improve a process on your team?