I interviewed with Atlassian for 8 weeks starting in June 2023 for a Principal Data Engineer position. The interview process involved the following stages:

• 2 Coding interviews
• 1 System design interview
• 1 Backend craft interview
• 1 Data engineer craft interview

There were 2 additional stages – values and manager interviews – which I did not reach.

I met a couple of great interviewers who had the right maturity and fit for how interviews should be conducted. They asked challenging questions and were professional and clear in their communication. Barring those interviewers, the following were some of the highlights of the horrible experience that I had:

• I met an interviewer in one of the coding interviews who didn't even speak clear English. He seemed disinterested and had the worst communication I have ever encountered in the IT industry throughout my career. At the end of my interview with him, I was in a state of shock, wondering how this person works at this global company with such communication standards.

• The final data engineering craft interview was the highlight of the entire process. I met a female engineer who structured the interview into three parts: 1) data engineering architecture whiteboarding, 2) a SQL section with three questions, and 3) a LeetCode medium complexity problem (merge intervals) to be completed in 60 minutes. The SQL questions were at a level that even interns could crack. Due to the limited time, I was able to come up with both brute force and optimal solutions to the LeetCode problem within 10 minutes, write pseudocode, and complete the SQL questions. I also whiteboarded the data architecture of a past project and discussed it.

Once the 60 minutes concluded, the interviewer asked if I could stay for more time, to which I agreed. We continued for another 30 minutes, discussing data modeling concepts, technologies, and development practices for data engineering teams.

The next day, when I received feedback from the recruiter, it was trash, full of lies and incorrect information. She rated me one level below the position I applied for, with absolutely no justification. It felt as though she had made up her mind beforehand and lacked the maturity to pick up on signals during a technical interview. I even requested to take another interview with someone else in a similar position, knowing that the feedback was dishonest. I could only hope that the interviews were recorded and someone could play back the recordings for review. In the end, I was extremely disappointed, having wasted 8 weeks of hard work on this interview, only to be left at the mercy of a dishonest and immature evaluator.

Here’s what I want to tell you, Atlassian:

• Stop putting interviewers on your panel who cannot communicate in English clearly. Train them thoroughly before asking them to interview candidates. This reflects the maturity of your own values that you preach about.
• If you are not serious about hiring, don’t scam candidates by taking them through a rigorous interview process and then keeping positions open for months.
• If things change during an interview process, such as filling a position due to an internal move or hiring an overqualified candidate, be honest and state that instead of lying.
• The current times will change, but if you continue conducting interviews in this manner, what will happen to your reputation, which is already going downhill?
• Finally, it might be time to look at some dead wood sitting around who are preventing fresh talent from coming in and adding significant value to the organization.

2 Coding interviews 1 System design interview 2 Craft interviews