I was not actively looking, but I was contacted by a technical recruiter via email. With all of the recent news about them, I decided to learn more, mostly because they are obviously making something unique happen with all of the attention they are getting. The first call with the recruiter told me that they are definitely more selective than most, or at least any recruiter that I've talked to in 15 years and 4 jobs' worth of a career. Actually, it made me think that every other company is doing it wrong from a recruiting perspective. He asked pseudo-technical questions that would absolutely screen out the less-than-average engineer and seemed to understand tech more than any recruiter I've encountered before.

I moved on to a remote coding exercise and then an onsite interview. I found the evaluation process to be very reasonable. You can't fake these folks out with hand-wavy responses. They're looking for engineers, and in particular, engineering leaders who know their stuff. Honestly, I was once what they want, but I have let my hands-on skills slip too much. And whereas I was able to solve the coding challenges, it was clear to them that I was really rusty. They were forthcoming and honest with feedback that I didn't make the cut.

Frankly, I learned a lot about myself from the interview. I missed because I let myself get too hands-off. I have to fix that and plan to. DraftKings is definitely the type of company that I want to be part of: innovative, growing, great talent, operating above the noise, etc.

I feel like I have to point something out here. Having read Glassdoor reviews by other interviewees, it seems like some are written by self-important engineers—you know, the arrogant, "I'm smarter than you" type who got humbled in the interview and whose fragile egos/social insecurities could not take it, so they lash out incognito on Glassdoor. You missed the cut. You're not as smart as you think you are. Get over yourself.

I'd recommend engineering at DraftKings to any engineer. You'll work with super-smart engineers in a fun environment on interesting solutions.

Teach me about a recent interesting technical challenge that you solved.