This process took a significant amount of time, primarily due to the time difference and long feedback loops.

I am based in West Africa, and a recruiter reached out to me, inquiring about my interest in working at their Bangkok office.

I responded, "Why not?"

• I had a chat with the recruiter for about 30 minutes.
• They sent me 13 stack-related multiple-choice questions and two rather long coding tasks on CodeSignal. I only attempted the 13, scoring 11/15, and was moved to the next round. I decided not to attempt the other two. I had about an hour to complete this.

The next stage was another 2-hour interview. The first hour focused on algorithms with a Development Manager, and if successful (which I was), the second hour involved building an iOS feature in CodeSignal. This task required creating a text-based editor with proper architecture and clean code, without auto-complete or syntax highlighting. I was interviewed by a Lead Software Engineer and was successful, moving to the final round.

The last round was with a Senior Development Manager. We discussed high-level architecture and scaling, from both the iOS and backend perspectives (as I have backend experience), for about an hour.

I was eventually informed that they would love to have me on their team. I negotiated my salary and was ecstatic. Although the opportunity was in a country I wasn't particularly enthused about, I felt it was a better situation than my current one.

In the past, I hadn't had much luck securing interviews with international companies, so you can imagine the joy my family felt when I shared this supposedly great news.

After about three weeks—signing the offer, informing my family, daydreaming about life in Thailand, and nearly submitting my resignation letter—I received an email stating that I could not be hired because I could not obtain a visa.

My Bachelor's degree is in Chemistry. Although I have 4 years of professional software engineering experience, I would need 5 years without a CS degree to migrate as an 'expat' to Thailand.

I explored the possibility of working remotely, but they were not interested.

I kind of feel I wasted my time interviewing with this company.

Classic algorithm problems.

About LeetCode Medium level.

Stack / Platform fundamentals.