I interviewed at HubSpot in November 2019. I noticed the Technical Lead position on LinkedIn and applied. Two days later, I received a response from the recruiter for an initial call. After the weekend, I had the call, which was friendly and polite. I was then given a technical task to complete over the weekend. This was awesome because I was still employed and very busy with my current job.

The technical task was easy. Unfortunately, my laptop broke, so I had to complete it on my wife's machine, which was slow. The time limit was 3 hours; I finished it in approximately 1 hour and 20 minutes. Afterwards, I was given time to polish the code. I didn't use this time because the code was already polished. It's definitely better to complete it as soon as possible, then polish, as there's no strict time limit for polishing. I know this, but I just hate creating ugly, fast code.

The next day, I was invited for an onsite interview, which I scheduled for the following week. Unfortunately, I didn't notice my recruiter's email asking me to brush up on my JS skills and didn't do so.

There were four rounds:

• First round (JS): Tricky questions in depth. Because I hadn't written JS for two years, I wasn't performing well. My first interviewer didn't seem to like me for some reason. The second interviewer in the room seemed very novice at interviewing and didn't seem to know what to do. I did very well considering I hadn't touched JS for several years, but I thought I had failed and was disappointed, though I tried to fix the situation.
• Second round (System Design): I did extremely well. My interviewer was great and guided me step-by-step. It felt like a conversation, not an interview.
• Third round (Coding): I highly recommend bringing your own laptop to avoid struggling with a new machine (they use Macs). The task was easy, but I forgot the parameters of one method and spent some time debugging it, still finishing in 15 minutes. By the way, you can Google whatever you want. For the rest, I just asked questions, and my interviewer was extremely friendly.
• Fourth round (Director of Engineering): She was fantastic and told me my resume was the best she had ever seen and my experience was so great I should present it on TED. I even felt confused, thinking it might be sarcasm. However, we shared the same vision for the organization and team, and we had a really nice chat. I was genuinely inspired that she had been an SWE for six months before being hired as a director; it's common practice there.

All interviews included standard behavioral questions.

After the interviews, my recruiter showed me the office briefly, gave me a free juice and a treat, and said he would call in two days.

The next day, I received a call informing me that I had an offer! I negotiated a bit, and he returned that same day with two package options, allowing me to select. I made my choice and gave a verbal acceptance the next day. The contract arrived that evening.

Everything was so fast, smooth, and polite, even the negotiation. All the people I met were awesome. My recruiter and the Director of Engineering were significant factors in my quick acceptance of the offer (I didn't even wait for the interview results from another huge company in Dublin).

Online technical task for 3 hours:

• System Design
• Behavioral interview
• JS fundamentals
• Medium LeetCode question