After applying to the position at DraftKings, it took a long time to get the ball rolling because the HR contact was uncommunicative and very slow to respond.

After the initial HR screen, I was set up with a one-hour technical "code test" interview. The interview consisted of me, the interviewer, and a third developer who was in training to learn their code test process.

They use an online code editor that runs the interviewee's code against several test cases. The code problem was relatively straightforward, and I was able to solve it successfully and pass all test cases in under half an hour. The interviewer had several "extra credit" questions that were not covered in the existing test cases, which I was able to solve in another 15 minutes. There was still 15 minutes left in the interview, so we chatted about the role & the future of DraftKings, my experience, and what I can bring to the team, etc.

The interview seemed to go really well, and since I aced their code problem & all the extra credit, I was fully expecting to continue in the interview process. The interview was late in the afternoon, so I quickly sent a "thank you" note to the HR contact to catch her before she left the office. However, instead of following up with the next steps, I got a rejection email immediately the next day at 9 am.

I was really surprised, to say the least, and followed up asking if I could get feedback for my own job search going forward. Unfortunately, I've been ghosted by everyone at DraftKings, which left me with the question: How can a candidate ace a code interview and still not be moved forward in the interview process?

I can only assume that DraftKings never had any intention of hiring me and only interviewed me for the training of their junior developer. I was pretty discouraged, and the whole process felt like a waste of time.

A database-style problem about a list of customers, focusing on how to give discounts to the most loyal customers.