I applied for an Engineering Manager role at their Warsaw branch. I had a short call with the recruiter, who was friendly and professional.

Then, I was interviewed by the hiring manager, who was also an engineering manager. The HM was friendly but relatively inexperienced. He didn't seem to know what questions to ask, only talked for about 10 minutes, and then let me ask questions for the rest of the interview. I asked many questions and felt like I was interviewing him. The interview ended early.

The reporting line was also a concern: I, as an EM, would report to him, also an EM. He, in turn, would report to a senior EM. This seemed like a major red flag.

Regarding the next stage, the HM told me it would be a "system design interview," whereas the recruiter stated it would be an "API design interview." I assumed this meant designing an API service. However, it turned out to be a complete waste of time.

This design interview was conducted by a staff engineer. In the first half, he asked me a lot of leadership questions, which seemed strange coming from someone with no leadership experience. I wondered why they couldn't spare a senior engineering manager for such an interview.

In the second half, he asked me to write some API endpoints in a Google document. We spent an hour writing endpoint URLs and request/response payloads for a simple use case. There was no system design or anything related to architecture. He was also reluctant to clarify my questions and just wanted me to type JSON in the Google document, paying attention to small details.

I seriously doubt how he will be able to judge if I'm a good engineering manager by looking at this pointless exercise. There were no questions about scalability, observability, architecture, best practices, etc. – just API URLs and payloads. It seemed like an interview question for a junior developer. What a waste of time.

The next day, I received a generic rejection email from the recruiter with no feedback.

Overall, my impression of Bolt is that they are still a very young company and are still trying to figure out how to do basic things. The outcome of the application seems pretty arbitrary, depending on the interviewer.

Write API endpoint URLs and request and response payloads on a Google Doc for a train booking service.