I had an initial interview in which the questions felt vague and on-the-fly. I'm not great at chatting it up in those situations, and it quickly felt awkward. While I expected the rejection, the feedback—that I lacked "day-to-day expertise in building complex frontend products"—felt somewhat patronising and inaccurate. A December 2020 review from here echoes my experience: "I received an email from the recruiter indicating I was not technically savvy enough for the role, and that I didn't demonstrate an ability to be autonomous. It was frustrating to hear, considering the vague and disinterested nature of their interview, and I am clueless as to how a company thinks they could evaluate these things based on the questions they asked." Having gone through a similar experience in August 2024, I'll add to the feeling that basing such judgments on an unstructured 45-minute call is flawed and wide open to bias. I later received an offer from a company with a more hands-on approach to technical assessment, which suited me better. If GitBook values the ability to talk a good talk, I understand and would agree I performed poorly in that regard, but making such sweeping judgements doesn't feel right. If you're applying, be prepared for an initial interview that's quite spontaneous. They seem to assess your technical ability based on how you present yourself and the rapport you build with the interviewer. If the questions feel vague, I'd recommend asking for clarification—something I didn't do.

The 45-min interview was mostly focused on my current role, after that I received feedback that I did not fit into the Founding engineer mindset. Had I known this was the focus (the job ad didn’t mention this once), I would have brought up much more relevant experiences from my previous jobs - indeed this is not the role in my current position, so I feel that the interview could have been much more about what the expectations are for the upcoming role and what I can provide, to which I would have so much more to say. It feels like a pity on Gitbook side - I wish them good luck finding a perfect match, it’s just that it could take them much faster if they asked how the candidate can thrive in the role rather than asserting their current role is different (which is very likely the case if the companies are totally different sizes).