I genuinely enjoyed being interviewed by the recruiter and hiring manager; they were both friendly and easy to talk to. The overall negative rating, however, is due to the take-home exercise.
The exercise was far too time-consuming and the evaluators were far too demanding given the lack of concrete expectations shared. I'm always open to constructive feedback, but most of the comments were far too subjective and nitpicky and did not make sense in the context of the project. As a result, their feedback could not be used as a learning opportunity.
Lastly, the evaluators do no credit you for everything you did do, but instead fault you for everything you didn't do, even if you do complete optional/bonus sections.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
What is a project you completed that you're particularly proud of?
Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 3 semanas. Acudí a una entrevista en Remote en feb 2024
Entrevista
The interviews with the recruiter and the hiring manager were great. After talking to the hiring manager, they even switched my application to a more fitted role they were planning to open (Analytics Engineer from Data Engineer).
Everything went wrong for the take-home assignment. I got rejected after the technical team reviewed it and delivered an unfair and harsh feedback by email.
The feedback contained 1 positive point and 5 negative points. On most of the negative points, the reviewers were down fully lying about things that were missing but actually present in the project, or focusing on nitpicks that weren't even part. The main expectations and evaluation criteria weren't mentioned (positively or negatively).
I have no idea what were actually the expectations.
Provided a data dump, the test consists in creating a self-contained, production grade project where you have to set up a database, load the data and run a whole dbt project to generate models and answer an analytical question.
The focus is in the setup of the project, code quality, best practices, documentation, testing. The analytics question is only optional.
I did both the test and the bonus section. The reviewers didn't bother to provide constructive feedbacks on the main test. They only criticised the approach on the bonus section.
They mentioned the lack of documentation (present) and no usage of dbt custom generic tests (forget to mention the 16 dbt tests in place) or weren't happy that I was using `brew install pyenv` without giving them warning.
It gives you a level of nitpicking you're dealing with.
The most disrespectful part of the feedback was when they mention I didn't clean the project by leaving a dbt model. I actually left on purpose to demonstrate my thought process for the sake of the test. I wrote that in the readme, but they forgot to mention it.
Please show respect to your candidates.
We spend quite a lot of time doing your technical challenges, only to receive such feedbacks which lack empathy and are disrespectful.
The way it was delivered doesn't live up to your Care value and your strong async communications culture.
Advices:
— Train your technical people to deliver feedback with empathy and respect
- Clarify expectations and evaluation criteria
— Make your review more collaborative. I could have clarified a lot of points directly in the GitHub Pull Request.
I really want to emphasise that I am had really great candidate experience with recruiter and hiring manager until receiving the technical team's feedback.
Your feedback on our rejection process is appreciated. We're sorry for any confusion or frustration this caused, and we're committed to providing more clear and helpful feedback in the future. We wish you all the best in your job search and future endeavors.
Respuesta de Remote
2y
Your feedback on our rejection process is appreciated. We're sorry for any confusion or frustration this caused, and we're committed to providing more clear and helpful feedback in the future. We wish you all the best in your job search and future endeavors.
Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 6 semanas. Acudí a una entrevista en Remote en abr 2024
Entrevista
I interviewed with Remote in April 2024. The process was long and took almost 6 weeks. Pretty standard - recruiter screening, hiring manager interview, take home task, discussion with team, and finally a chat with the director of analytics. The team largely seemed like a good group and role seemed quite interesting. However, everything went downhill once the offer came in. Their salary benchmarks are very low, they offered me (a Senior Analytics Engineer with 7 years experience) the equivalent of $138k in San Francisco. They say that they have world class compensation, but that's based on some obscure scale they follow that make it a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The first red flag was the fact that they do not sponsor visas and as a result could not hire me in the place that was discussed in the first round. I distinctly remember informing the recruiter that I would need a visa and he assured me it wouldn't be a problem.
Then, after some back and forth and finalizing my location it took them nearly a week to send the actual contract, in which time I had to turn down a few other interview processes.
Finally, when the offer actually came they severely low balled me and offered nearly $10k less than what was discussed initially. I understand companies have ranges and the final offer can differ from the initial range but I've never experienced such a steep drop. Also, the fact that this was not communicated much earlier on in the process or even in the 2 weeks between receiving an offer an the actual contract was extremely unprofessional. When asked why such a difference the recruiter said something that was utter gibberish that it wasn't even worth trying to clarify. To quote him "We have senior I and senior II levels, and the 55k USD is around the top of our senior II range.
What the team missed to start with you on a senior II level right ahead is the technical leadership from companies that are moving as fast as us on the complexity level as we have here". Like, what does this even mean?
Anyway, at this point there were too many red flags and I decided to turn down the offer. The company doesn't seem to stick to their word, their interview practices go directly against their core value "transparency", and communicating with them requires a lot of time and effort.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
Pretty standard stuff, the task alone was a bit ambiguous and strange.
We're sorry to hear that you had a negative experience. We aim to provide all candidates with a positive and meaningful interview, and we apologize if this was not your experience. We will be taking your feedback on board and making changes to ensure that all candidates feel valued and engaged in the future. Thank you for your honesty and for helping us improve.
