Initially, I received a HackerRank Q&A for screening. After passing this, I moved on to a technical pairing exercise. The exercise went okay and involved an interesting question related to packet/data replication in a distributed system. I was allowed to Google anything while attempting the problem.

The hiring team and recruiters were all incredibly helpful and friendly. That said, the interviewer didn't seem very interested and sounded strapped for time. It felt rushed; we started the interview, they asked if I had any questions, and we drove straight into the coding exercise.

Furthermore, it was extremely difficult to concentrate as the interviewer did not mute their mic, so I was overloaded with sounds of water taps, water bottles being emptied, and whatever else was going on.

They did provide a good chunk of help but generally seemed disinterested and were clearly engaged in something else. It felt more like a "do work, ask for a review, do work, ask for a review" process, and it was hard to establish mutual interest or collaboration on the task. I think they were not paying attention half the time. Thankfully, I found the interview question quite interesting; otherwise, I probably would have cut the interview short and left.

In general, I'm still a fan of Cloudflare and the product itself. Most of the people I interacted with were really nice, and the work definitely sounds interesting. That said, I would probably avoid this place if you notice any red flags during the interview process. It doesn't bode well for the future work-life balance or potential team dynamic of what you might be joining.

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