A team lead reached out to me for a position they had.

They were quick to set up two interviews, each one hour long. I opted to do the interviews in person, at the Waterloo, ON office.

The first interview was the 'life story' interview. The recruiter I spoke to was warm and friendly, and they showed me around. The important question here is towards the end, where you're asked why you want to work at Shopify. The real answer is: because I'm a skilled developer looking for a job that pays money for my skills. They probably don't want to hear this, so you're better off saying something flattering about the company and how you really want to work there.

The second interview was a short coding exercise on coderpad.io. The problem was about computing the checkout value of a cart of items after applying some discount rules (BOGOF or buy more than 2, get 20% off). I chose to do it in Java because that's what I've been coding in lately, and I produced a solution that worked for all of the test cases in about 30 minutes.

The next day, I received a rejection call from HR. The feedback was that they were looking for someone more senior for the role, and my code could use more comments and should account for scalability.

I find it funny that they contacted me for the role and then rejected me, saying they were looking for someone more senior. The coding feedback is pretty useless. The code is very simple, and with variable names and function names that explain what is happening, there should be no need for extra comments. About scalability: I was told that the important thing is to produce something that works by the end of the test. If I had been asked to address scalability, I would have made appropriate changes.

I suspect Shopify gets a stream of good candidates that want to work there, so they prioritize things other than skill. I suspect you need to be 'hip' to work there; I saw a bunch of yuppie types in hipster clothes. So, I would suggest you look and act cool if you want to work there.

Given a list of items and quantities, apply discount rules and determine the cart's checkout value.

Why do you want to work at Shopify?