I had the same terrible experience as the three previous SRE reviews. I thought I might do better, but the first reviewer was right – applying will be a waste of your time and energy. Their responsiveness and refusal to give feedback demonstrate a complete lack of respect for candidates that doesn't look set to change any time soon.

My first call with the recruiter was rescheduled. The new time they suggested clashed with some family commitments, but I went ahead with it because I wanted to get things moving. I dialed into the call, and no one arrived. I switched back and forth between the previous call ID they'd given me. I sent an email to ask if I had the right call ID. After 30 minutes of waiting on the call, I got a reply from the coordinator to say that the recruiter's computer wouldn't turn on and that we'd have to reschedule again.

The next rescheduled call came a month after I'd first applied. Having read the other reviews here, I mentioned that I was interviewing with other companies and was keen to speed up the process. I was told that it wasn't a problem and that they'd gotten someone through in just two weeks before.

I asked about how the role differed from the Platform Reliability Engineer and Infrastructure Engineer roles they were also advertising. The recruiter wasn't sure about the details but said that they'd email me some more information, and I could come back to them when I had decided which I'd prefer to apply for. They made a point of sending an email to a colleague to request more information while we were on the video call.

The next day, I received a technical test for the PRE role, out of the blue, without any additional information or conversation. I responded with a summary of our previous conversation and, attempting to speed things up, explained that I just wanted to continue applying for the SRE role. I repeated this several times and didn't get a reply until three weeks later.

They hadn't actually read my email, though, because the response said that they'd been waiting for me to complete the PRE technical exercise and proceeded to send it to me again. Eventually, we managed to schedule the SRE technical exercise, but there was no apology for their mistakes.

The exercise needed to be completed within an eight-hour time limit. So, I arranged it for a weekend, and my wife took our children out for the day so that I could concentrate. The exercise was fun and interesting, but very time-consuming, and it wasn't at all clear how it was being evaluated. I was happy with my submission (good README, tests, commit messages) but exhausted by the time I'd completed it, and I'd lost a day with my family.

I sent emails afterwards asking if they'd received my submission and when I could expect to receive feedback. Two weeks later, I got a response to say that they were still reviewing it and that it had taken longer than normal because of Thanksgiving. To my surprise, I received an email the following day to set up a call with a hiring manager.

The call with the hiring manager took place within the same week. I thought the call would be about my technical exercise submission, so I refreshed my memory of that and thought about some improvements to talk about. Instead, the questions were about "tell me a time when" and "what are your thoughts on." I thought it went okay.

The next day, I received a stock email from the recruiter to say that they had "decided to move forward with other candidates." No explanation why – I have no idea why I was unsuccessful at such an early stage or what it is they're looking for. I asked for feedback, but unsurprisingly, haven't received a reply to my email, and I know from the previous reviewers that they'll refuse to give it anyway.

The stock email ends by saying that they "encourage you to continue looking at our GitHub Careers Page for future opportunities." Nope, never again. I suggest you don't either.

Homework: Create a utility that compares DNS records against a YAML file.

What does SRE mean to you?

What are good leadership qualities?

Can you describe an incident post-mortem process?

How do you prioritize technical debt?

What is the scale of the projects you've worked on?