There is a reason why a good number of interview reviews are bad: because the process is.

To be clear: I had two technical phone interviews, which were totally fine. The interviews were friendly. The questions were hard, but fair. Between the two interviews, I had to solve a small homework coding exercise, i.e., implementing an encryption tool.

However, the process around the interviewing (and communication with the Cloudflare-internal recruiter) is totally flawed:

• Silence for several weeks between interviews.
• No feedback was provided after interview rounds. I only received more information when I emailed the recruiter two weeks after the interview.
• No information about what to expect in the interview. When asking the recruiter about information, I never received an answer.
• For one of the scheduled interviews, I (the candidate!) never received an invitation.

In the end, after 8 weeks of interaction, two interviews, and one coding exercise, I received an automated and totally unpersonalized email stating that my application is no longer under consideration. While I can totally live with this decision, the way of communicating this is very disappointing. After having spent so many hours in the interview process, I would have expected a more personal final email. To be honest, if Cloudflare treats candidates like this, then I truly do not want to work for them.

Do you know what Cloudflare does?

Implement a small command-line file encryption tool. You may use libraries, etc.