I was contacted by a recruiter from TransferWise via LinkedIn.

We had a ~45-minute discussion over the phone where they introduced the company, the various engineering teams, and openings. I was also asked about my background a little bit.

They were very kind and gave a detailed, coherent description of the possibilities. They also called me once more before my onsite interview to make sure I had all the information I needed for preparation.

Some days later, there was an onsite interview with two software engineers that took 1.5 hours.

The first half was a casual discussion mainly about my background, going into details where the interviewers saw something interesting.

In the second half, I had to provide an implementation for a problem. I coded on a laptop (in Sublime Editor) with a shared screen so they could follow on TV.

It was kind of like pair programming: when I got stuck, they gave me hints; when I was ready with a sub-task, they gave me a new question to extend the implementation, etc.

Everyone was polite and kind. I felt that I didn't excel during the interview, yet it was a good experience.

Next week, I got my feedback via email. I had been declined, and this was the only point that left me disappointed because the feedback was written in a pretty harsh way, like "You have never used X!"

I do accept that I didn't pass, but the way the feedback was given makes me wonder how arrogant (?) the engineering culture can be there and doesn't make me want to apply again in the future.

Give an architectural overview of your current project you are working on.

Implement a cache loader class. What if capacity is fixed?

Error handling?

Testing?

What was the very last problem you resolved on your current project?