I applied online. The process took five months.

I applied for the Backend Engineer role, and during the application, you could indicate which team you'd prefer to join. Being more Ops than Dev, I said the Platform Team, as it suited my skillset. The interview process was very reasonable. The hiring team are very personable, and you don't feel like you're just a number in the interview mill. This relatively casual approach does have its downsides. I'd provide a couple of weeks' worth of availability, and sometimes I'd have to chase them towards the end of the window to see if they wanted me to extend it. Dates would often be picked just a couple of days in advance, which can be difficult if you need to work around your current employer.

The primary interview via Hangouts was good. I felt the engineer who interviewed me tailored the interview to my answers and changed tack part-way through to try and find where my knowledge ended. The coding test was reasonable, and the follow-up review was also good. We shared my screen, and the interviewer had me make some changes and then explain what was happening when it failed. It almost became a pair programming session. I had two on-site interviews: one on systems design and another general technical discussion. The technical discussion was conducted by two developers, and as such, it wasn't really an interview I could excel in, as I'm not a developer. I would have thought that, given that I preferred to be placed in the Platform team and that my CV clearly shows I'm from a sysadmin background, I would have a more infrastructure-focussed interview. I definitely knew I hadn't done that well in it.

At the end of the process, I felt quite let down, given that it had taken so long to get through the interviews. I hope that the issues I experienced are just growing pains caused by their success, but I would say to the hiring team that not responding to emails for one to two weeks leaves the candidate feeling like they're being ignored. There's only so many chasing emails you can send without coming across as pushy. That being said, the hiring team are great to deal with, and the whole company's approach to the interview process is very sensible, pragmatic, and personable.

How virtualisation software works to provide separation between hosts and guests.