My Journey with Ironclad started with a call with a recruiter. Due to personal reasons, the recruiter who actually called me was different than the one I had emailed with. While many people would think that this is slightly annoying, I found it to be just the beginning of the many ways Ironclad takes care of its employees and how Cladiators take care of each other. After the phone screen, I loved on to a short coding round with a software engineer on the team. It was about an hour long and was a pretty fun, typical coding round. I got to spend time chatting with the engineer after and hear their perspective on IC. I was approved to move on to the onsite round. There were three sections -- a demo of the product, a chat with the Director of Eng, and a coding project (took the most amount of time). A unique thing that IC did was the demo. All other companies I did had their onsite very focused on coding/technical knowledge. I really liked being abel to see what the team was building and being able to see the employees get excited about what they've built and where they see the product going. The chat with the Director was just that, a conversation about problem solving process, what we find valuable while working on a team, and what the future of IC could be. The project was a little nerve wracking at first. It was about 2.5 hours to code/come up with solutions for a larger problem statement given. After the 2.5 hours, there was a 30min debrief where I was able to go over my code, explain what I was thinking and also talking about what I was planning to do for the next steps. This was a great feel for what a code review could look like and felt very collaborative. After receiving an offer, I also had the chance to speak with their COO. It was an amazing opportunity and showed me the care they put into forming a good team. The biggest take away for me and the impression that IIC has left on me is that this is a company that cares about its people. Empathy is one of their core values and there is no shortage of examples that people can give emphasizing that. Even in my short experience with IC, I can say that I was treated with respect and a level of care that I can't say other companies gave. Ultimately I received an offer from a big company that I could not refuse. It was heartbreaking for me to decline the opportunity to work with IC, but I will be watching and cheering them on from the sidelines and hope that this isn't the last of our paths crossing.

Didn't make it past the first round. It was straightforward but took me a while to understand the question and what they wanted me to do. I got it eventually but I think they were looking for candidates who were able to do it much faster.