MOST DISORGANIZED INTERVIEW EVER!!!!!!!

These people have no idea what they are interviewing you for!

A London-based recruiter from Spotify reached out to me on LinkedIn for an engineering position. After a discussion about which team I would fit, she sent me a link to apply for a Data Engineering position. I told her right away on the call that I don't have a data engineering background; I am a backend software engineer and would like to apply for a backend engineer role. She told me, "Even if you apply for the DE role, we will interview you for SE, as both these roles go hand in hand at Spotify." So, after my phone interview, I was invited for an on-site interview. Then, the recruiter from the Boston office took over (she was pretty new, just a couple of weeks in). And then it started again – she began scheduling me for a data engineering interview panel. I had to tell her that I am interviewing for a backend software engineer role. After a couple of days, she got back to me saying, "We have had your profile evaluated by the hiring manager, and we think you would be a better fit for backend engineer." She then told me we would interview you for backend software engineer, and I agreed and went ahead with the interview.

My onsite interview went really well. I solved all coding problems in the most optimized way and designed a pretty stable system. My interviewer even told me, "You can expect this to be the perfect solution." My interview was a standard software engineering interview, and there was no part of data engineering.

BUT, now after a couple of days, the recruiter gets back to me saying, "We cannot make you an offer as we need more data engineering experience." I couldn't be more angry now, as I had communicated this 1000 times that I am NOT interviewing as a data engineer.

I failed to understand how they can reject me, given they interviewed me for an SE position. In the interview, you judged me as an SE and rejected me saying you don't have DE experience.

I am not angry for getting rejected, but instead, they wasted so much of my time. However, I am now happy not to join them, as I don't want to work at such a confused workplace. Instead, I received a much better offer than Spotify, both work and compensation-wise.

2 coding rounds 1 system design 1 hiring manager 1 debugging prod system