I recently went through Gusto’s seven-stage interview process for a senior engineering role. The stages included a recruiter screen, technical screen, values assessment, coding skills assessment, hiring manager interview, architecture skills assessment, and a final working session.

While the process was lengthy, the coding assessments were fairly realistic, focusing on real-world problems rather than LeetCode-style exercises. However, the final working session was where the experience completely fell apart.

This session was advertised as a pair programming exercise, but it was anything but. In a real pair programming environment, you collaborate to solve a problem. At Gusto, any attempt to clarify problem requirements, which were payroll-specific and domain-heavy, was met with resistance. The interviewer was condescending throughout, making the session feel adversarial rather than collaborative.

The biggest issue was how unforgiving the process was. Any minor mistake while iterating toward a solution was immediately called out and corrected, without any opportunity to fix it myself. Some examples:

• I initially missed an edge case. Rather than allowing me time to catch it, the interviewer jumped in and corrected me immediately.
• I mistakenly mutated a date object while adding time to it. Instead of letting me figure it out, I was interrupted and corrected on the spot. The interviewer then condescendingly explained pass-by-value vs. pass-by-reference, despite it being completely unnecessary.
• I implemented an O(1) solution that was already optimal, but I was told I should have optimized it further into a mathematical calculation. The interviewer attempted to explain how to use the modulo operator for this but struggled to articulate it themselves, all while maintaining a condescending tone.

The feedback I received for why I was not hired was largely based on this experience. They also mentioned that I had not finished one of the other coding problems, but I was less than two minutes away from completing the final requirement when the session ended.

If Gusto wants to evaluate how candidates work in a real-world team setting, they need to rethink this session. Right now, it is not pair programming. It is an unfair test where candidates are graded on how quickly they can read the interviewer’s mind while being talked down to the entire time.

Would I recommend interviewing here? Not unless you enjoy being micromanaged and judged on unrealistic expectations.

Can't be too specific due to an NDA. Most questions have already been published in other reviews.