I never had such a bad experience with a company as I had with Coupang.

It all started with an email from their recruiter. I asked him if they had a principal or a lead position, and he told me that the answer was yes.

Later, I found out that they had submitted me for a Senior SDE position. The answer regarding the principal/lead position was just to “fool” me into interviewing with them. They probably thought they could buy me cheap.

Then there was the first interview. It was easy, and I passed it.

One thing I remember is that the interviewer asked me at the end why I wanted to leave my current (good) workplace and immediately added that they don’t pay as well as other good companies in the Seattle area.

The onsite interview wasn’t extremely hard and went very well for me.

Yet at this point, I kind of understood that they were trying to buy me cheap and assign me to a position I had no interest in.

I tried to bring this up in the interviews and make clear what I was looking for.

One of the interviewers in the non-technical part tried to tell me that it doesn’t matter; “Principal, senior, it doesn’t matter,” he said. Too bad he forgot that at the beginning of the conversation, he bragged that he had moved to a principal position when he moved to Coupang.

Last but not least, only after a full month did Coupang bother to return a short answer via some no-reply email.

Do yourself a favor and avoid this place…