After passing the obligatory recruiter scan, which included a video chat or a coffee meeting (if you're nearby), I received a coding challenge. As a full-stack developer, I could choose between a back-end and a front-end challenge. I opted for the former and spent about three days refining my solution. It was a realistic problem that could take anywhere from 4 hours to 5 days to solve.

Before starting the challenge, I was invited for lunch to experience the company culture firsthand and meet a few people. The recruiter was very charismatic and helpful, giving me the impression that he was advocating for me rather than just the company.

After submitting my solution, I was informed that the review process could take up to seven days. I inquired about speeding up the timeline, and they obliged. Within 1.5 days, I received an invitation for a technical interview at their Sydney office, scheduled for a few days later.

The technical interview consisted of two parts:

First, you discuss your solution with two engineers. You receive constructive feedback and implement proposed changes while they observe and assist. During this review, you explain technology-specific concepts, but they also assess your reaction to feedback and your working style.

Second, you meet with two other individuals. They describe a standalone web service they envision. Your task is to ask pertinent questions and propose a theoretical solution. Knowledge of low-level data structures and algorithms proved very beneficial here. The challenge is programming language agnostic, but be prepared to write pseudocode and create diagrams.

An answer is provided the next day, followed by discussions regarding visa and salary.

How can we write multiple strings to a file while keeping them separated?

Your code involves some delayed operations that depend on the system clock. How could we make them better testable without having long-running tests?