Interviewed with HR and the senior leader of the team. This seemed to be smooth and well done.

Then came the technical interview, which was four interviews, 45 minutes each, with different people. Rather than go into detail on each, I will say that most of the questions asked were very vague, often including troubleshooting some kind of scenario.

The problems with this, unfortunately, were that the interviewers did not seem to be up to speed on their own questions and struggled (visibly) to narrow down what they were looking for. The phrase was often repeated that it was okay to not solve it, but it really didn't seem to be okay.

Very aimless, broad questions that you could spend days answering fully. They appeared to be looking for specific answers to specific parts of the problem but would not narrow down the scope of the ocean, thus leading you to hunt around for where they may have been most interested in you focusing on.

It was often said that they had hired only senior people, but the lack of interest in the answers regarding the rest of the ocean they weren't interested in, and lack of preparation seemed to suggest otherwise.

One portion involved troubleshooting a problem that had recently occurred. The individual spent a good 20 minutes of the 45 talking about himself and the company, then described the problem. The next step was that I would verbally state a troubleshooting step, and he would produce an answer as to the result.

What ended up happening was that I would state a step and then receive a long-winded description of what happened. This would include a lot of deep thinking, pregnant pauses, hums, and what seemed to be ill-preparation. By the end of this, I had talked for perhaps 5 minutes total the whole interview and engaged in what, in my mind, would be about 3 minutes of troubleshooting steps. This certainly left both the interviewer and myself unimpressed.

My advice in retrospect would be to:

• Cut off the interviewers if they are unable to control their verbosity; make sure you get your time in.
• Call to account the ill-preparation if it presents itself to you; you deserve a fair shot.
• Maybe wait a couple of years for this role type to mature at HashiCorp.

Here is the topography of an environment. What things do you see wrong with it, and how would you secure it?