The entire process took about six weeks, from receiving the first email from the recruiter through the final rejection.

Yes, the process takes a long time, but GitHub has a lot of applicants and many people to weed through. I wish it had moved faster, but I've found that the companies with the best jobs tend to have longer processes.

I originally applied for a position through the Greenhouse website.

I received an invitation to provide my availability to a recruiter and to sign an NDA. The conversation with the recruiter was great. They gave me information about the position, the team, and GitHub's priorities when bringing in a candidate. She explained the process to me and what to expect.

I was given a technical challenge with just an overarching idea: to build a well-tested utility in Ruby with documentation for the app, as well as my process, challenges, and future plans. It had some asks that seemed intentionally vague to see how I would approach and/or explain them. I have a full-time job and was also interviewing with other companies, so I took deliberate time to work on it. I spent about two hours planning it out and about 12-15 hours building it over six days. I submitted.

A week later, I received an invitation to submit my availability to chat with the team about my technical challenge. It was an interview with four people with whom the position would involve close collaboration. I went through my code and explained my process and some of the decisions I made and why. It was a pretty open conversation where they also posed questions, such as, "If you had a person working with you and an extra few days, how would you use that time to enhance this application?" and "What are some of the drawbacks or downsides of certain choices you made?"

One week after that, I received an invitation to fly out to GitHub HQ in San Francisco for about five hours of interviews with various members of peripheral teams and managers. GitHub flew me out on a Monday afternoon, sent a car for me at the airport, dropped me off at a hotel (which they also paid for), and I interviewed the next day.

The final round was intense. It was 45-minute block interviews, almost back-to-back, with various people on different teams that work with the team this position was on. Each interview had a different theme: one for each of GitHub's values, as well as a diversity and inclusion interview.

I was taken back to the airport after the interview, then had a wrap-up phone call with the recruiter. They went into detail about compensation and benefits, as well as the every-other-week on-site onboarding process. My only complaint about this process is that the recruiter tentatively attempts to schedule you based on how long you would need to give your current job. I tried to remain neutral about whether I got the position or not, but that one detail made it especially hard not to think that, since all of my other interviews went well, I didn't get the position.

A week after the final round, I received a phone call from the recruiter stating they were going with another candidate. It was heartbreaking, but they offered to help with anything they could and said to email them freely. I asked to be referred to another team and am starting the process over again.

The no-feedback policy is true, and it makes sense. There isn't always a specific thing you did wrong; it could truly have been that another candidate was better. Would you want to receive a phone call where the recruiter said, "Just have more experience" or "Be less bad"? I did reach out to a few of the people I interviewed with and received advice that not being chosen shouldn't dissuade me from interviewing for another (or the same) team sometime in the future, and that one person didn't get the job on their first try.

Overall, despite a heartbreaking loss in the final round and the length of time it took, I think it was a great process and I will definitely be shooting for a job at GitHub in the future.

What does diversity and inclusion mean to you?