Screening was a programming exercise, which was of reasonable complexity, a quick 30 minute phone interview, and an online application.

I interviewed at the Watertown site. The technical recruiter started with a quick tour of the building and overview of the schedule.

My first interviewer was an architect, who seemed interested in himself but not quite as much in me. He asked only one or two questions about me and didn't really answer any of my questions about what working at the company was like. He did describe what his job was pretty well, but I'm not sure I learned anything else in the hour I spent with him.

The technical interview questions were fairly easy - each 90-minute session had a whiteboarding process followed by a coding process. The interviewers did not care how the software was coded and only cared about getting the right answers. I was disappointed by the scope of these interview questions - they would be better suited on a college freshman's spring final. I did finish the questions with enough time remaining to ask the interviewees questions, although again it was fairly difficult to get answers of any real substance.

What really astonished me was that they planned to leave me alone during lunch. I was surprised that a company of this size could not schedule one or two developers for an informal conversation over lunch - particularly with my schedule only consisting of five company representatives. I spoke briefly with one or two developers that I could find in the cafeteria before resolving to run out the rest of the clock with my sandwich.

The final interview - like the first - was a cultural interview, and although this interviewer did give me one question to run with at the start, he was otherwise disinterested and unprepared - so I got out of there quickly. Ultimately, athenahealth struck me as a company with little regard for the hiring process. I hope that they didn't put their best foot forward, because the people I met with gave me an impression that the company is both low-energy and unorganized. After interviewing, I withdrew my candidacy, so I don't know if they would have made me an offer.

The most difficult or unexpected part of their interview was that there were no difficult or unexpected questions.