I was referred to GitHub by a friend with whom I previously worked and who now works at GitHub. They referred me to a specific team, and I had a short, 30-minute conversation with the manager. I was very interested, and they felt I would be a good fit for the role.

It took the manager several weeks to post the job, and a few more days before I finally had my first interview with a recruiter. The recruiter was very informative about GitHub and the interview process. They asked me several questions related to why I wanted to work at GitHub, about my previous experience, and a few random tech questions (e.g., "How would you describe a database to a ten-year-old?").

They ended up scheduling a series of three 1-hour interviews with various members of the Ecosystem API Team. The first interview was a deep-dive into my previous experience (the "Technical Taste Interview"). The second focused on interpersonal skills and dealing with inter- and intra-team conflict (the "GitHub Values Interview"). Finally, the third interview was a short technical assessment where they had me pull down a Rails application, make a few minor changes, and talk through my thought process. Each interview was conducted remotely, with two individuals interviewing me each time and sharing the questioning.

Overall, I felt the interviews went very well. I had good answers to their questions, and the discussions were engaging for all of us. The coding question was incredibly simple. I had no previous experience with Ruby but was able to solve their questions easily and ended up having 20 minutes to chat about various other improvements.

It wasn't until the following week that I received an email from the recruiter stating they had decided to pass. They did not provide any feedback as to why.

I rated this a negative experience for two reasons:

• The time between communications from the recruiter and manager was excessive and unprofessional.
• They provided no feedback as to why they passed.

How would you describe a database to a ten-year-old?