Four rounds/steps:

1. Phone screen
2. Online coding assessment
3. Team interview/coding interview
4. Architecture & Design

The phone screen was simple and nothing noteworthy. The online assessment had two videos recording parts and one coding assessment. One thing to note: the online tool used for the coding assessment required, in my opinion, an invasive plugin that monitors browser tabs (which is removed after leaving the assessment). Additionally, the assessment is rather poorly implemented. The instructions tell you that the response is JSON, but in fact, the response is HTML/Text with a JSON body for the payload.

The team interview is where I ended up applying for Rocket due to the following reasons: one of the employees conducting the interview was rather arrogant and condescending, believing that her way was the only way, especially on the code assessment section (which confuses me on why they have the initial online coding assessment).

The coding assessment was literally only 20 minutes long, asking to implement a solution calling an API. However, the team did not disclose ahead of time that I would be expected to use my own IDE, which meant some quick setup work.

The API (which was rather a poorly implemented API - never seen an API that implements pagination without allowing an input for number of items per page) was rather simplistic. However, as I alluded, despite multiple ways to arrive at the same result that would not impact performance, she was adamant that her way was the only way. This is after her changing the problem 3 times after I arrived at a solution to the original problem. This was all in a short 20-minute window.

She then rushed the interview with 10 minutes remaining for my questions, instead of allowing me to finish the last little change she requested. At the end, she was all, "We've done this so many times, we know exactly what we are looking for." Which told me all I needed to know: that Rocket employees do not practice their own isms that they link to in every email of the interview process.

At the conclusion of the interview, I felt no longer wanting to continue in the application process. I am sure I am not the only one that felt like the team rubbed them the wrong way.

What is your mentoring approach?