A recruiter reached out to me and laid out the process. It was straightforward, with a coding and a manager interview. These initial interviews were to be followed by two other design interviews.

The weird part was, I answered both coding questions well within the allotted time window. The interviewer and I had a decent chat at the end, with lots of time for questions. Also, the discussion with the manager was pretty straightforward; there was no point in the interview where I felt I was stuck or that I answered incorrectly.

They waited for almost a week and then sent me a rejection. Usually, I have a pretty good guess as to what went wrong, since I am very critical of my own performance. That was not the case in this scenario; I am shocked and perplexed as to what went wrong.

The only logical reasoning I'm considering is that they already had offers out to other candidates and were considering me as a backup option in case the first one didn't go through. I am sad to see a company treat prospective candidates poorly, and they don't bother to provide some kind of feedback or reasoning for rejecting a candidate.

Avoid this company if you don't want to feel wasted.

Coding and project-related questions