First of all, Red Hat's policy gives each team full control over their interview and hiring process. So this is why people have different experiences according to the team they were interviewed by.

In my case, I was referred by a current employee for a remote position with a team scattered between Europe and the Americas.

A few weeks later, I got an email from a recruiter based in Central Europe. She proposed an interview date and time. It was a 1-hour interview with the Engineering Manager, followed by a 1-hour panel interview with the team (3 Engineers).

I replied by asking her more questions about the interview style, the topics expected to be covered, and if I should prepare any code samples to show (given that the vast majority of my work is courtesy of my employers and their clients, not on public GitHub repos), or if I should fix an open issue in their product so we could discuss it during the interview. However, she totally ignored my questions and focused solely on the interview date and time.

The first interview with the Engineering Manager went really fine. It was a general discussion about my past and current experiences, why I wanted to work in OSS, and I asked him a few questions about Open Source projects he contributed to.

He seemed very pleased with my knowledge of the OSS world, the Java ecosystem, and my general knowledge about modern software engineering practices and utilities (containerization, cloud computing, PaaS, server-less architecture, microservices, etc.).

The next interview with the team was the opposite; they didn't seem prepared at all. Their plan was to see a piece of code I wrote and am really proud of. I said I had nothing prepared for the moment and that I had asked the HR if I should prepare something, and that she ignored my questions. They were like, 'What should we do now?'

To cut a long story short, unfortunately, they did not have a plan B. They even told me they were on a tight timeline to hire for this position, so they couldn't afford to ask candidates to fix bugs in their product and do code reviews.

So, we passed around 20 awkward minutes. I was asked general questions about my experience with remote work and to explain the architecture of a product I am proud to build. I did my pitching, and I sensed no real engagement from their side. The vibe I sensed was like: 'Meh! We heard a lot of pitching, and we want to see code, real beef.'

The thing that really discouraged me is not the fact that the team was not ready for the interview and didn't clearly communicate the interview prerequisites in advance. The real turn-off was how the HR twice ignored my follow-up emails after the interview.

So, as I said, after that interview, in a very unprofessional turn of events, the recruiter went completely radio-silent. No responses to follow-up emails…

The question is, will I apply again for a job at Red Hat after such a negative experience? Maybe, if I ever had the time to extensively contribute to an OSS project so I can get the 'stamp,' and if the whole process got more organized.

Advice to the company:

• Try to standardize your interview process; don't leave it 100% in the hands of teams. Some of them can be less organized than others. Or at least provide them with training.
• If you want to keep the current process, then clearly communicate your expectations. And remember, for every hour a candidate loses during an interview, the company loses 3 hours of your senior engineers' time.

Describe the architecture of a system you are proud to build.