Initial call with internal recruiter. One of the most charming initial messages from a recruiter I've seen, which is what pulled me in to the process (usually I ignore these).
Really vibed on company culture. I really like their unconventional ways and focus on transparency. One of those being the open compensation policy which I found both unconventional and awesomely transparent. Usually companies like to keep this information secret from everyone to give them as much power for bargaining as possible, here they don't negotiate salaries, they have a formula for what you make which is a detail I really like, since I'm really in support of breaking up old traditions that only benefit the employer.
Did an initial code screening which I thought was very easy. Following that was a 3 hour technical interview with two teams. The first problem was diving into some really old code on their stack and figuring out how to make it work. It was not a hard problem to solve. Despite the challenge being pretty junior, I was a little put off by the fact that the interviewers were not okay with asking questions. For example I asked if either of them knew off the top of their head if array.prototype.sort modified the array or returned a new one. I thought that was a fair question to ask to save time, but the interviewer gave a curt response of "well how would you figure that out". Obviously I can google it but if you know off the top of your head it seems as easy to ask you, as I would in any pairing session. Even clarifying questions like "do you expect x or y to happen?" were rebuked with responses like "well, what do YOU expect should happen?" I have never had an interview where they were so annoyed by questions like that, so I continued on trying not to ask anything else.
The second part of the challenge was a software design challenge with pseudocode. I struggled at this part, even though the challenge was pretty easy, in my defense the requirements were poorly communicated so it wasn't very clear what they were asking for. I think if they had detailed written requirements up front, I would have been more successful, but I guess that part of being a good engineer is asking the right questions to get to the heart of the problem, which I guess I failed at. Just sort of a mixed message on their team regarding how open they are to taking questions during the interview.
Despite solving both problems, I was not moved to the next round. Although I'm disappointed about that, I do respect the rigor with which they are selective about their candidates. Even though I think I'm a stronger engineer than they judged, I can't fault them for having a stringent process.
Following this interview is another on-site which is expected to take 6 hours. I think that's kind of a ridiculous ask, but not having gone through with it I would say my experience with them was still very positive, and they, especially the recruiter were very considerate of my time and needs.
Overall impression: great company, great company culture, cool product, but among the engineering team there might be a sink-or-swim mentality (or maybe one of them forgot to eat breakfast that day, as I am inclined to give the benefit of a doubt).
