I was allowed to skip the phone interview and come directly for an on-site interview. The technical interview went great, with no issues with whiteboarding code. I ended up with extra time to ask questions of the interviewing engineers.

Their internal culture seems solid, although slowly transitioning from a process-oriented old enterprise stack to a more agile, startup-y process. The nontechnical culture interviews with the Director of Engineering and the PM went really well.

I was expecting a slam-dunk, so I was surprised when the recruiter contacted me and said they wanted me to do a take-home coding exercise to clear up some issues around an area of professional growth I'd disclosed in the interview.

It struck me as super unprofessional to schedule a full day for an interview, only to be told that they needed more information. At every other company, they do take-home exercises before on-site interviews.

If engineers have questions about something said during an on-site interview, then the appropriate time to ask about it is during the interview! Please don't wait and make a candidate do additional work after a full day of interviewing.

I didn't feel like I'd be professionally respected if my hiring was such a squeaker that it required a post-onsite take-home assignment, so I just put in a few hours of work and submitted it. I wasn't surprised when they rejected me, just insulted that they'd put someone through so much extra effort when we could have resolved these issues with a conversation during the on-site interview.

What's an area or skill where you feel weak or could learn more?