The initial conversations with a recruiter and the hiring manager (head of data platform) were actually pretty great, and I felt excited going into the rest of the interviews.

Then came the 1-hour session with another senior dev. To my surprise, they had set the hiring bar really high. There is no way that 99% of developers (including the interviewer himself) could solve it in just one hour, as it requires a lot of brainstorming around multiple data structures and coming up with the right algorithm. Of course, a brute-force approach is not accepted.

I actually thought I did great and walked away from the interview hoping to be called back for the virtual onsite. In fact, even at larger tech companies, I would have been invited for the next round. Clearly, the interviewer must have thought otherwise.

It is my understanding that they will only allow a candidate to proceed if the solution is complete and passes all tests. This is sad because no smart hiring process should focus on this thing and this thing only.

Due to the difficulty of the problem, it is much better to know how the candidate attacks it from different angles, whether they understand which data structures and algorithms to use, or whether they can point out their own mistakes.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed by the approach Discord takes into hiring developers. I remember reading in one of the employee reviews that many people there are burnt out due to a lot of work during the pandemic and the company is not hiring fast enough to distribute the workload. Well, if they are looking for the top 1% of candidates without (most probably) compensating them the way FAANG does, it's no surprise that they are failing to recruit.

With that being said, I'd advise against interviewing with Discord unless you are prepared to be disappointed. Just read the other interview experiences, and you'll know what I'm talking about.

In the past, I've been on the other side of the table where other devs at my current company and I interviewed candidates, and we did a much better job because we knew you could either hire LeetCode devs or devs with a wide range of experience and great communication skills to keep the ball rolling.