I applied online for a senior software engineer position. The advertisement specified that a GitHub account with an open-source project was needed (red flag #1); I have none.

I received an email (not a telephone call - red flag #2) fifteen minutes (red flag #3) after sending my resume.

I scheduled a phone screen for a few days later. The phone screen was not a screen at all (red flag #4); it was simply a way of checking that my English was fluent enough for a phone interview.

The phone interview involved classic "Cracking the Code Interview" questions, with two easy problems. Before those, I was asked about things that I had done (microservices and NoSQL), which indicated the interviewer had no prior experience with them, a rather strange situation for a self-described "cloud company" (red flag #5).

Very soon afterwards, I received a "code challenge" test intended to "prove that Datadog's problems were interesting to me." The code challenge focused on a problem within Datadog's domain. It wasn't difficult, but it was structured in a way that required writing a significant amount of code rather than demonstrating problem-solving ability (red flag #6).

I agreed on a timeframe with the recruiter and delivered the challenge well before it was due.

I wrote exactly the code needed to solve the problem. A few days later, I received a rejection email. There was no discussion about the code, no additional questions. It implied that code is something you magically get right the first time, perfectly optimized, and having mind-read your stakeholders' minds – a lot of antipatterns are present here.

It was a slow period at work, so I didn't mind the absolute waste of my time. Plus, it provided a lot of important lessons learned.

Write an HTTP log monitoring app with plenty of stats on traffic.