Process
An HR person from Slack emailed me to set up an interview for Friday at 5:00 PM. They never called at the scheduled time. I emailed them, and on Monday, they got back to me saying, "Sorry, I was sick. We can reschedule again." No big deal so far.
Finally, we talked on Tuesday. She assigned me two coding problems (specific to Slack), of which I had to pick one and was given a week to complete it. I finished it and sent it on Friday. Since I did not get verification that they received my code, I sent another email on Monday.
The HR person emailed me back, stating she missed my email and would ensure the project manager received it. A day after, on Tuesday (exactly one week after they assigned me the coding project), they emailed me that they could not offer me the internship. I emailed them to ask why, as the code was working perfectly. Of course, I never heard back from them.
My concerns:
- Why did they ask me to write a script to test some functionality of their product instead of giving me generic coding questions like other legitimate companies?
- Is the answer to the first question, "because they want to get their job done for free?"
- Why did they never give me a reasonable answer for why they did not hire me, especially after I did whatever they asked for?
- They gave me one week to do the code, but since I finished in three days, they took less than one day to decide they didn't want to offer me the internship. This means they did not want to hire me in the first place. Refer to the second concern.
Questions
Write a script to test some functionality of their website.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Slack QA Instern role in United States.
Success Rate
Slack's interview process for their QA Instern roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Slack's QA Instern interview process in United States.
Slack Work Experiences
- 4.0Challenging Eng Work, Woke PoliticsSenior Software Engineer • Former EmployeeSan Francisco, CAMarch 25, 2025Pros: Challenging engineering work, dedicated and hardworking teammates, and I learned a lot solving interesting problems. There is a good work-life balance.Cons: Woke company politics and discrimination against white males in hiring.
- 5.0good companySoftware Engineer • Former EmployeeSan Francisco, CAJune 26, 2024Pros: Slack is a good app.Cons: Nothing that I can think of.
- 5.0Great place to workSenior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeDenver, COOctober 27, 2025Pros: Slack has been a really unique experience. Slack is owned by Salesforce, but has not been entirely integrated into the corporate experience (though we trend closer to integration every month). The developer experience has been strongly employee driven, and the engineers are very passionate about maintaining what makes Slack great. The codebase is primarily Hacklang, which is an interesting PHP variant. I really hated it at first, but after having worked with it for some time, I find it relatively easy to write and follow. When you start, everyone is very understanding that it takes 6+ months to really get a full grasp on the language and our codebase. Using AI is encouraged, but not explicitly required like at some tech shops. Coding LLMs are not necessarily great at Hacklang, but the more recent models have been getting better.Cons: Creeping corporatization. Huge, hundreds-to-thousands-of-employee meetings where absolutely nothing of any import is said. Massive priority shifts recently as the Agentforce bet flopped, and a revitalized push into agents.
