Phone Screen with a Manager

Virtual onsite, with 7 rounds. A mix of behavioral and coding.

Asana has such a great reputation that I couldn’t help but be surprised about how bad my experience was.

I can’t say anything good about the interviewers. They acted all superior and were annoyed when they were not hearing the responses they were expecting (nothing wrong with the responses, mind you; they just hoped for very specific things, otherwise you weren’t deemed worthy).

In a coding exercise, a candidate was shown a document with a poorly written question and some examples. After reading and asking clarification questions, the interviewer, visibly annoyed, just said, “Read the document.” Then he stated he would return in an hour. The candidate remarked, “If this was a take-home test, why are you even here?” An hour later, the interviewer returned, and they discussed the candidate’s solution.

In one coding round, a candidate presented a solution and admitted that it wasn’t optimal but that it would work. The interviewer agreed but then explained that Asana had encountered that problem and solved it in a different, “right” way. The candidate assumed they also had 45 minutes to arrive at such a solution.

Although I’m sounding bitter, I didn’t act like this in the interview. Anyway, I did my best because I really wanted to work there, but it feels like I dodged a bullet.

Needless to say, I didn’t get an offer. But I wouldn’t know it because it’s been a couple of months, and the recruiters didn’t even bother to give me an update. I never heard from them after my onsite. It was quite disrespectful to someone who spent a few hours in their hiring process. At least an automated response, people; that stuff is not hard.

I signed an NDA. All I can say is that there were no "Luck Check" (LC) questions in my rounds, but the questions asked were hard.