Relatively quickly after applying, I received an email about a coding task on a HackerRank-like platform. I was given only one week to complete it, which was a bit upsetting considering it was the end of December. I had to sacrifice time with my family to prepare.

There were two coding tasks: one Easy/Medium and the other Medium/Hard. There were also some general process-related questions (e.g., "How would you start working on a project given some initial specs?" or "What databases fit in this situation?") or behavioral ones. Coding was time-limited; the second part was not.

After several weeks (not too long), I received an email about moving to the second round: a phone interview. I was supposed to pick several preferred time slots over the span of the following two weeks. In the email, I was also asked to answer several questions, including my salary expectations.

The phone interview was on the Amazon Chime platform. It started with a behavioral question (e.g., "Describe a situation when you had to work under pressure") and then a coding task. It was presented in an online text editor, but it wasn't able to run any code. I had to "run" and "debug" the code in my head. The interviewer saw my actions in the editor the entire time, and we discussed the solution as we went.

The tasks themselves were fine and nothing surprising, but the interaction with the recruiter and the whole process was really annoying:

• Giving one week exactly over the Christmas period was a bit frustrating.
• When I asked the recruiter about some details of the questions from the second email, I never received any reply.
• I was supposed to get a reply about the decision 2-3 working days after the phone interview, yet that never happened.
• I tried contacting the recruiter again to get any information back, but, again, no response. In the end, I learned I was rejected (or the offer was withdrawn) only because I went back to the careers portal and checked the status of the application.

In short, there was very poor information flow during the hiring process, and I wasted a lot of time for nothing.

Describe a situation when you had to work under time pressure.