I was contacted by a recruiter for an interview. It took 1.5 months for them to get back to me after I responded immediately. Once I spoke to the recruiter, we were able to schedule the first round of interviews pretty easily.

The first round was two hours with no break in between (at least 10 minutes would have been helpful).

The first hour was with a recruiter to go over a "life story" – essentially discussing my experience with the recruiter asking questions. This was straightforward.

The second hour was a code challenge in CoderPad. The prompt was pretty standard for a first-round interview, nothing too complicated. I was surprised that it wasn't collaborative or set up as a pair-programming exercise, as I had assumed this company did. It was just me talking and solving the problem, which is standard in the industry, but I thought this company valued collaboration and expected that to be reflected in the interview.

They are boasting about growing the company quite rapidly right now, and I'm getting the impression that the strong culture they've built is already being sacrificed as a result. This is unfortunately common when companies grow rapidly.

Overall, it was a fine interview, but it felt drastically different from when I interviewed with them 5 years ago. Back then, it was much more friendly, personable, and collaborative.

They are still probably a nice company to work for, but it's something to consider as they continue to grow.

A problem involving sorting strings