I was approached by one of their in-house recruiters on LinkedIn. The recruiters were very competent and made the whole process as clear and straightforward as possible. It was enjoyable and quick.

First, there was a quick phone call with the recruiter. I was asked about salary. It was refreshing to have a frank and honest conversation without negotiation, but be prepared for this question early on. Apparently, salary is also dependent on interview performance.

Second, an online test was administered. Four questions on HackerRank with a 90-minute limit tested basic CS knowledge like algorithms and data structures. It was fair. The questions weren't equally difficult, so spending 1/4 of the time on each is a mistake. Luckily, I had practiced HackerRank before; otherwise, I would have bombed due to the unusual standard input/output unit test format HackerRank uses. One annoying thing was that one or two of the test cases timed out. I was using Python, so I don't know if the timeout was set for C or something else. Perhaps I just used a sub-optimal algorithm, but I did talk to somebody else who ran into the same issue.

On-site was also great. They arranged for flights and a hotel and provided plenty of drinks and snacks. There were three interviews, each an hour long.

The technical interview was tricky but fair, with two lovely interviewers. I had to write out an algorithm/pseudocode on paper. This is harder than it sounds and is worth practicing.

The system design/architecture interview was also with two interviewers and was largely good. My only criticism is that given they ask questions with potentially very broad and deep answers, adding an additional constraint after 30 minutes isn't ideal and messes with time planning. Perhaps it's a strategy, but they were supportive.

The "fit" or "culture" interview, however, was terrible. It wasn't at all as advised. We barely talked about the company or their culture. Instead, a single developer, who had apparently never worked with clients or outside web development, interrogated me. It seemed like he was just looking for a weakness and focused almost half the interview on something he perceived as that. He seemed friendly superficially, but unlike the other interviewers, it seemed he didn't want me to succeed. It was almost hostile. I think he was inexperienced in people management and more of a developer than a manager. So, the lack of broad experience and hostility made it very difficult to communicate well. This was very surprising, especially since they sent such a person to the only one-on-one interview.

Ultimately, I was informed that although the technical interviewers were in favor, the fit interviewer wasn't, and so I didn't get an offer. Except for the fit interview, I would do it again.

The questions were mostly applications of basic CS concepts, such as algorithms and data structures. The most challenging was the system design/architecture interview question. Frankly, if you don't have web development experience, especially with large-scale applications, this is tricky to revise for. The task I received was to design a critical component to interact with another service. The difficult parts involved error handling, failover, and maintaining consistency.