I was recommended to Fidelity by a friend of mine who is a current employee.

I was contacted by a recruiter who asked me to give my availability for an interview with the engineering manager. The interview was scheduled for a few days later.

I was not provided any details about the meeting's nature, and I made the mistake of assuming its purpose was to cover the role, which I didn't know much about, and my experience.

On the day of the interview, the engineering manager arrived a few minutes late and asked to step away as soon as he connected. No problem, I assume he has a busy meeting schedule.

When he came back, we talked briefly about the role and my experience. He then asked me to share my screen and open my notes app. He wanted me to solve a coding problem and did not want me to use the tools I use every day to solve problems in web development. He wanted me to reverse a string.

Since I don't have string or array methods memorized, I had to tell him that I wouldn't be able to solve this problem without additional resources like documentation. He asked me to talk through how I'd solve the problem. I did this and got no follow-up or feedback on whether my answer was acceptable.

I was taken off-guard, and at this point, I'm very anxious that I'm not doing well.

Then, arriving 15-20 minutes late, a principal engineer arrived, introduced himself, and immediately instructed me to open a code sandbox of my choice and create an input that would display its value in a separate element. This time, I may use whatever documentation I need to solve the problem. I used React, and after what felt like probably too long, I solved the problem. I am now extremely nervous and anxious.

We moved on to Q&A. I asked about the role, the stack, and other Fidelity-related questions.

I know this didn't go well and expected to be rejected. The thing is, it's not really my fault it didn't go well. I was given no notice that I should expect a technical assessment for the first interview with the company. The interviewers were polite and nice enough. I also appreciate that the second exercise was practical, a thing I've had to do before several times. I wasn't as quick or as thorough as usual because of the surprise nature of the assessment.

I didn't hear anything about the interview. I never received notification that I was rejected at all. Every other day or so, I would log into Workday and see that the status of my application was still "Interviews in progress." Today, it has been nearly 3 weeks since the interview, and I logged into Workday to find that my application had been moved to Inactive - Not selected to proceed. Again, no email, no notification. I was effectively ghosted by Fidelity.

This process from employee referral to rejection needs a good hard look. I am not impressed.

Given a multi-word string, reverse it. Write this in your notes app and you may not use documentation.

Create a component that features a text input and displays the value of the input as you type in a separate element. Use a specific code sandbox and you may use documentation.