Old USA, and this is a famous tech, (YC Seeded, SF Bay Area), company (older, and semi-large, but not public yet). I have had this 'references', but requiring

Old USA, and this is a famous tech, (YC Seeded, SF Bay Area), company (older, and semi-large, but not public yet). I have had this 'references', but requiring a former manager was a first. The whole process had way more interviewing rounds than Meta and Google did. At least Google decided to skip the phone screen for me.