The initial interview process consisted of a quick phone screen followed by a roughly three-hour programming challenge. It was set up differently than a typical code sample, featuring an API-related project reflective of the work done at HubSpot.

The project was fun to solve, but the most weight was placed on how quickly a correct solution could be submitted, rather than on the elegance of the solution or the quality of the code. The emphasis on speed highlighted a strong difference in values between HubSpot and myself, and I was not selected for a follow-up interview.

My recruiter was timely and polite, but the coding challenge was a bit long for the company's initial technical screen. It doesn't make sense to have participants work for over three hours on the challenge if only the fastest individuals are advanced. If the problem is deemed solvable within one to two hours and longer-than-average completion times are not considered, participants should be cut off after two hours, saving them the extra time.

Get data from the API. Solve the problem using the data. Post the solution to the API.