This process had a few stages, but in an unusual order which resulted in an extremely positive experience for me.

First, the round was directly with the hiring manager. This was awesome because I could ask some deeper technical questions that you don't usually get to ask until later. I learned a lot about the product and had an extremely good conversation about how I could fit in.

The second round sounded like it would be tough but ultimately resulted in my favorite coding interview experience EVER. It's a 3-hour setup split into 1-hour segments. This sounds overwhelming, but when you consider that technical interviews are trying to measure your technical ability, and usually you're only allotted 45 minutes to do some janky algorithmic/data structure puzzle dance, there's a lot of irrelevant information and a crap ton of noise in that process. The three phases are split as follows:

• One hour to pair with 2 engineers to scope out the problem at hand and do some basic coding.
• One hour to solo code (this was amazingly relaxing to be in a real setting).
• One hour to talk about my solution and improve the code in ways they wanted it to be improved.

A+ experience, I will recommend this process to all my future employers.

There were 3 more hour-long interviews: 2 technical chats and one more chat with the hiring manager about career goals and growth.

One downside: I had a standing offer with another company, so I rushed their process. As COVID restrictions were being lifted, the usual interviewing crowd were on vacation. My last interview was a bit concerning. I was getting weird vibes and felt like I wasn't being led in the right direction. The two interviewers were clearly typing about me (maybe they forgot that I could see both of them at the same time), which was VERY distracting. This was by no means a dealbreaker; I just chalked it up to inexperience.

I received an offer with a pre-IPO company with a massive opportunity for growth in the RSU department, and it's hard to beat that financially.

My recruiter was awesome too! Thanks so much, Kayli! You rock!