TLDR:

GOOD: Helpful interviewer, good assessment, in my opinion.

BAD: So many things – interviewer switch-up last minute, no video call, interviewer had zero personal skills and sounded stressed.

I was reached out by a recruiter for a position in NYC. The email confirming my interview stated it would be with a male software engineer from NYC.

When I took the phone call on the day of my interview, the interviewer was female, which took me by surprise. She barely stated her name before jumping into the interview process. When I asked if she was part of the NYC office I would potentially work for, she said no, she was in SF, and this had been thrown on her calendar last minute.

She asked me a few questions about my current job, and I'm telling you, she could not have cared less. I don't even think she was listening.

When it came time for the assessment, I thought it was strange that I had to code while talking on the phone. All of my previous interview experiences have involved a video chat conference coding session. I think that if it had been a video call, I would perhaps have had a better impression of the interviewer and there would have been better rapport.

I made the mistake of selecting JS as my primary coding language, which was totally my fault because I've been out of the loop with JS for a bit (outside of React). If I could offer any advice, use a language you're extremely comfortable with. The interviewer was helpful; I'll give her that.

When I asked the interviewer personal questions about her experience at Lyft, she mentioned they had just launched a project yesterday and she had been interviewing all week. It sounded like she was stressed and generally over interviewing (fair enough). I don't think I would want to work for a company that throws interviews on you last minute after a hectic week. I also don't know if I would want to work with someone as apathetic as this interviewer, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt.

This only happened before the weekend, so I haven't heard anything back yet.

Online coding assessment: Fetch data from an API and iterate through results to grab the first X number of page results.