I was approached by a recruiter about an opportunity. Although it was an OpenAI-initiated conversation, the recruiter remained very uncommunicative. Replies to my questions via email came either days later or never at all. I'm guessing there is some automation running against LinkedIn to scrape and reach out to potential fits. I proceeded with the process anyway, just to see what it's like.

I chatted with a recruiter. This was a very standard conversation to see which of the available jobs I would be interested in. Next were the systems design and coding exercises. Neither of these were very hard; they're very typical for all tech companies these days.

The systems design interviewer was barely paying attention and was clearly working on something else and chatting with others while I was talking. You could see him typing, smiling at odd times, and not hearing my questions. He didn't even bother to talk through the design problem, just handed you a Google Doc write-up to read and start designing.

The coding exercise was a lot more pleasant. The interviewer was very engaging and collaborative. She seemed more junior, but very sharp, and I'm guessing a great person to work with.

I didn't pass one or both of these interviews, I'm guessing. But again, complete silence from the recruiter, and a generated template email was sent to me a few days later to say they won't go to the next stage.

I will recommend taking these interviews as practice for companies you'd actually want to work in. Don't expect a good process, but it is good practice for other such interviews.

Systems Design:

Given a simple UI with user preferences, implement the system. The UI is already provided, so focus on the APIs and server-side components.

Coding Test:

Given a simple mockup, implement the UI. Some CSS is already provided, and an API to fetch data also exists. The recruiter prep document mentioned structuring the code well, ensuring all functions work, writing CSS, and writing tests. It's unlikely to complete all of this in one hour, so it's best to ask the interviewer about their expectations.