Poor recruitment process. I applied online and received no response. I sent a LinkedIn message to a recruiter and eventually got a reply. The recruiter didn't even attempt to match my skills with the available job openings. I have over 15 years of experience in the relevant field, but it wasn't good enough for them. A quick search on LinkedIn reveals several individuals with only 2+ years of experience (fresh out of college) in senior roles for which I was applying. Either they are geniuses, or I am missing something here.

After a few reminders, I was asked to start with a software engineering role and complete an online challenge, which I thought was acceptable given similar practices at other companies. I was informed that the initial technical interview would be based on this challenge.

The challenge involved writing an app with a specific feature – one that is already present in the Coursera app itself. It was described as a task of approximately 5 hours. The requirements included network communication, JSON parsing, image loading, resizing, and caching, with the rest left to my discretion. It took me around 7 hours to develop a good design, write the code, and test it. I ensured there were no obvious or major bugs (in retrospect, I suppose there might have been one, but WTF). I modularized the code into proper sub-packages and included extensive comments to ensure anyone reading it would understand the rationale.

The following day, I received a terse response stating that the submission did not meet their expectations and that they were not moving forward. No explanation was provided!

One would assume that after spending so much time designing and coding (comparable to a full day of on-site interviews with major companies), you would at least get the opportunity to discuss your design choices with someone in person. It seems too much to expect a design document, a test document, or numerous unit tests within a 5-hour timeframe (if that's what was expected). And to be denied even an initial interview after all this effort.

In retrospect, it appears to me that they were simply looking for any reason to not hire me. Perhaps only if you are from an Ivy League institution...

The "Discover" feature of the Coursera app.