The interview process was very nice and quick because I had another offer, and Dell wanted to challenge that.

I received a phone call from the hiring manager just to get to know me, what I can do, and what I have done. We then scheduled my first interview with the group architect.

My first interview was easygoing and calm. After we discussed the company, product, and position, and I spoke about myself, I was asked about past architectures I had designed. While I was explaining it on the whiteboard, the architect tried to challenge me with different scenarios and extreme cases, such as high availability, redundancy, and capacity. Of course, he added requirements that the original system didn't have, and he wanted to see how I would adjust my architecture to these new requirements. It was very technical and focused on the requirements for the position, including programming language, third-party integrations, and relevant architecture. This interview lasted around 2 hours.

Two days later, I received a call to schedule the second technical interview with the hiring manager.

This interview was straight to the point, with no small talk. I had to solve many questions on paper, such as writing a sorting algorithm and answering questions about queues, stacks, and linked lists. All of the questions were on the easy to medium scale; nothing was overly challenging. This interview also lasted around 2 hours.

On the same day, I had a meeting with the group manager, a very high-ranking manager. He tried to make me feel uncomfortable and conducted a reverse interview, where I was expected to ask him questions, not the other way around. He was very tight on his schedule, but he decided to be late to his next meeting and continue talking to me. This meeting took around 1 hour instead of the scheduled 30 minutes.

The next day, I received a call to schedule an HR interview, which was the hardest HR interview I have ever had. It lasted 3 hours, during which I had to talk about myself from childhood until the present. She asked me many questions, such as what my good and bad qualities are. When I finished talking, she asked me to provide more, and more, and more. I felt a little uncomfortable being pushed into a corner. We had to take a drinking break as my throat became dry and I started coughing.

I was offered a job on the spot with the HR manager. She sent me the salary and benefits details via email so I could review them. I had a competitive offer, so they raised the salary even more. Before signing the contract, I still had some doubts and was scheduled for a one-on-one talk with the hiring manager, where he cleared up all my concerns and reservations about the job.

I also got to see him in a less formal setting. We talked a lot about the company, product, future vision, work-life balance, day-to-day work, the team, and how and where I would fit in.

I signed the contract and felt very good about it.

I don't really remember most of it. It was mostly "tell me about your former project," and they would throw in more requirements to see what changes I made.

There were a few simple questions about sorts, queues, and stacks, and another one on linked lists.

We talked a little about runtime and memory complexity, discussing the pros and cons for each method.