I applied online for a Web Engineer job at The Times. I told the recruiter that I was interested in working on one of their client-facing teams and looking for a Senior level role, as that was my current level.

I went through a phone screen, then a 1:1 remote interview, and then an in-person panel of five interviews in four hours. This interview panel was for a non-client-facing team, which was frustrating since I specifically discussed wanting to work on a client-facing role. But you know, sometimes that's just what's available in terms of roles.

The feedback I got on all of those interviews was that I did okay on one of the coding interviews and good on all the remaining interviews (in total, two technical and three non-technical).

The Times then offered me a down-leveled (Mid-level, non-senior) role, citing the single interview where they said, "My code was kinda messy." This was despite me acknowledging that during the interview and being told not to worry about refactoring my code once I got a working solution.

This all resulted in an offer that was about 40% under the number that they had told me was a reasonable expectation at the start of the interview process.

My hunch is that my age/YoE (I'm very young for my level) played into this decision, which would be annoying since that was known at the start of the recruitment process. It could have prevented me and The Times staff from spending a large amount of time discussing/interviewing for a job they didn't intend to offer me (since a job offer to switch jobs for a 30% pay cut doesn't count to me as much of a job offer).

Additionally, responses and feedback were continuously delayed, which would have been fine had The Times not given their own dates for when I should expect feedback and then blown by them without any notice as to why.

Describe a time you had a disagreement with a coworker and how you resolved it.