Stage 1: Had an initial chat with the engineering manager. Discussed my background and learned more about the role. I specifically asked if the interview for the Front-End role would be algorithmic, and was told it would be adjusted for Front-End. They mentioned that they adjust interviews based on a candidate's background.

Stage 2: The interviewer seemed surprised by my Front-End oriented background during our initial discussion before the interview started. It felt as though they were expecting to interview someone for a generalist Software Engineer role. I was presented with a binary tree question (serialize/deserialize).

I found the whole process to be disorganized from start to finish. I received a video interview invitation after the initial chat with the engineering manager, and then received an on-site invitation from HR before the video interview had even taken place. This was quite confusing, and when I responded to HR asking to confirm this was a mistake, I never received a reply.

Regarding the video interview, I was told it would not be a "Crack the Coding Interview" type of interview and would be adjusted for Front-End, meaning I wouldn't need to study LeetCode-style data structures and algorithms. I was expecting a JavaScript-based question, either for building UIs or involving data structures/algorithms with a Front-End slant, all in JavaScript. Instead, I was asked to solve a binary tree problem. As mentioned, the interviewer seemed completely surprised by my JavaScript background, as if they hadn't reviewed my CV or were not actually hiring for Front-End and there had been some misunderstanding.

To summarize, both the engineering manager in Stage 1 and the interviewer in Stage 2 were very nice. However, I was disappointed with the entire process, which felt disorganized, something I did not expect.

Serialize and deserialize a binary tree.