I have been contacted by the internal recruiter through cord.co. The job position was Software Engineer with Python experience and an interest in learning Scala. Their plan is to split the current Django monolith into Scala micro-services. I do have a mild interest in learning Scala so I decided to apply. First I had an initial phone conversation with the head of technology. It was a fairly interesting chat where he asked me questions about my previous experience and some more generic software engineering questions. I did ask about the plan for moving to Scala micro services but I didn't get a quite exhaustive answer. At least not as I wished. I was expecting some sort of roadmap but it sounded more like "we're still trying to figure out" to me. I also asked whether there was a defined plan for me to learn Scala but similarly I didn't get a straight answer. He suggested I could have used my personal development time (2 hours per week I think) although I don't think 2 hours per week are enough to become fluent in a new language. I have got the feeling they expect you to use your own personal time for this. After the phone screening I proceeded to the pair programming challenge where I was interviewed by two Senior Python Engineers currently working in the scalability team. The challenge consisted in adding new endpoints for a Django REST framework app and writing tests for it. Even though I don't have massive experience with Django I didn't find it particularly difficult. I managed to write code that passed all the tests during the allotted time. Although I initially implemented a method in a non very efficient way. One of the interviewers made me notice that and after refactoring the code I missed one method call, to which he almost shouted with passion "this is not gonna work!". I had the feeling he literally couldn't wait to tell me that. Maybe it was just my impression but he seemed to have a very condescending tone throughout. After the pair programming exercise they asked me some more questions and I also asked some questions. Obviously I did ask questions around the transition to Scala and they didn't seem quite enthusiastic about it. They told me they had zero interest in learning the language. Again, this left me quite confused and it's still not clear what real motivation behind this is. Is it because Scala is more performant? Is it because Scala is more trendy? Is it political? Not too sure. During the cultural fit interview I asked what was their plan after covid and they told me that they may or may not go for a hybrid approach. Again, there didn't seem to be a definitive answer around this. Anyways, it's been a week since the interview and I haven't heard back from them, despite having solicited the internal recruiter. That's right, they didn't even bother to give me feedback or anything. I can only assume it's the company policy at this point. I am still a bit confused because it looked like an interesting company at the beginning but I got the feeling they don't have a clear vision around many things, and judging from my experience, not great in terms of communication. Due to this I'm marking the experience as negative.

Quick, straight to the point, very good and mostly positive feedback from recruiter in the beginning - then at the end they lowered my offer and when I asked why he gave me very vague negative feedback that when I had asked previously, he said there was none (besides a few things he marked that weren't so important)