MathWorks Product Marketing Manager interview questions

I was referred internally by an employee. Hiring Manager contacted me and was nice to talk to. He liked my experience and wanted me to talk to an engineer (not an eng manager). This interview sucked with the engineer asking me questions based on MS and was almost like an engineering interview. Based on what I gathered, engineers define the products and the product manager role is just a placeholder to communicate with customers. It is so engineering driven that it would not be a good place to work for a product manager.

My process lasted a solid 2 plus months from start to finish. I applied online and got a call from the hiring manager to set up a 30 min call with her. We had the call the next week and it went well mostly on background and interest level. Then did a call with the recruiter cover some housekeeping issues, some discussion of why do you want this job, etc. Also got into salary to see if we were both in the same range. We were not. But she agreed to check on it to see if there was room to move. There was and we went on to some on site interviews with the hiring manger and another person in the department. Again mostly back ground and experience and the why do want this job question. Everything seemed solid. They said they had other candidates filtering in so it would be a week or so before I knew if I was invited back. I was. Part of the MW process is a presentation and then 1:1 interviews with 6-10 people. I had 8. I prepared a presentation directly related to work I had done that fit the job. It was 45 minutes. Then off to the 1:1s which were a 360 collection of stakeholders, a culture fit person and the recruiter. Also met with a VP. The questions were part classic interview and part related to what they wanted to know. They each had a sheet of questions. Ended up with hiring manger again at the end and everything seem great. But they had a some other people coming in a couple of weeks. Got a call the next day though from the recruiter saying she wanted to initiate a reference check and background check. I agreed and sent of the paper work back the list of references. My references got back to me saying it was a pretty structured call. Scales of 1-5 rate this person creativity, writing, etc. One reference said I should expect an offer soon. 2 weeks go by nothing, 3 - nothing. I ping the hiring manger and recruiter and eventually she gets back me with an email saying they are looking elsewhere. I will rate this as a negative experience. It was a lot of time and preparation and work. I gave them access to background and references, a move that usually means we want to hire you - we just want to be certain.