Don’t waste your time if you have industry experience. The below is about being material for Atlassian interviewers to practice on, a cycle of a chess game where you are just the pawns to configure someone else’s mechanism of operation.

It’s vital for any company to provide honest feedback, but not to use it to cover underlying company politics.

Interviews:

1. Experience - went well. Questions about the overall experience.
2. Coding - went not so great, but was offered to downgrade from senior to mid-level. Question: Build Rate Limiting.
3. Systems - went great. Question: Create a Web-Scrapping service.

The feedback: Technical feedback didn’t reflect how the interviews went at all. I doubted at the moment, while hearing that, that it was from my interview. The feedback stated the absence of knowledge.

The structure of the recruitment process is you submit your CV. It stays with recruitment. This is good, as this way, interviewers can be checked for the integrity of their job. I suggest all interviews must be recorded.

The feedback provided stated I had not answered nor asked any questions, didn’t build the system, and had difficulties explaining technology (ironically, something I work with daily and get paid for, with licensing, certifications, and customer feedback).

In general, tech interviews are a pool of candidates applying to various positions; hence, whatever question you get, that’s it. It doesn’t matter what you clearly stated in the resume, your division of interests and experiences; you get what you get. You cannot ask questions regarding the team you want to be in during those interviews, as no one knows where you will end up. That’s risky for career control/goals/growth, as it’s very unclear what’s actually on the offer, and going into whatever team is a confusing experience.

There is no point in mediation, as if they decide you have no industry experience based on randomized questions they ask, unrelated to the resume submitted, they discredit it right in your face. It led me to think there was clearly a hunt for the most comfortable candidate that fits the bill criteria.

It’s not about you, your fit, your knowledge, teamwork (that is written all over the Atlassian website as material to prepare), or your demeanor. This gives a very strong smell or even confidence in getting into a toxic workplace due to lousy recruitment practices and the mismatch of the presented information online.

If you are employed, think really, really carefully, and get the questions answered. Trust your gut for the reason of not ending up in a disaster and a career setback.

1. Rate limiter
2. Web scrapper