Their final technical interview was one of the worst interviewing experiences I had the misfortune to take part in during my 10+ years in software engineering. I have participated in many interviews before and have run many myself. This one was not at the level I would expect from a company with such a high profile as Canva. There were so many problems with it that I am surprised at myself for not cancelling it after the first five minutes. To list only some of them:

• No information was given that this interview would be technical. Before previous technical interviews, information was provided on what to prepare, but not this time.

• All requests for special needs were ignored. Do you have dyslexia? Do you suffer from panic attacks? Do you stutter? Do you have poor eyesight? It didn't matter.

• The interview requires you to share your screen and use an IDE of your choosing. While this would generally be a good thing, the lack of prior information about this requirement meant I might have ended up scrambling to set up an IDE in the first five minutes.

• The IDE you are supposed to have set up before the interview is not just any IDE. It specifically needs to be set up for JavaScript. However, the task starts with TypeScript. Then, you are supposed to import a library using HTML tags. Finally, it needs to have buttons in a browser and run on a webpage.

• The mismatch between different concepts and languages (TypeScript, JavaScript, running as a script, importing via an HTML tag, running in a browser with buttons, etc.) gives the impression that the interviewer is not very experienced in coding or in conducting interviews.

• Any form of higher-level discussion was noted as a negative. You explained why the JS class system is a mess and you would instead use a builder pattern? "Candidate doesn't understand JS objects." You mention how the 'this' keyword is a mess in JS and the problems with relying on it, and how you use a pattern to work around it? "Candidate doesn't understand this keyword," etc.

• Forty-five minutes is a very short timeframe to judge someone's technical skills. I admire the skill required to judge someone fairly in such a short timeframe.

• Speculation: The technical tasks were possibly never tested internally. All of the bizarre setup mistakes would have been easily spotted by running them with someone in the company.

Implement the observable pattern in JavaScript.

Use the provided TypeScript interface.

Run it as a script.

Import the provided library using HTML tags.

Run it in a browser with buttons.