A third-party recruiter reached out on behalf of a company in San Francisco (part of Zillow Group). I responded that I was interested.

This was followed by two coding exercises, which I completed and sent the same day.

Now, this is where it got interesting. I was informed they liked my work and wanted to move ahead to an onsite round without even breaking the ice. Anyway, it was scheduled 2-3 weeks later, given the team's availability.

Onsite: I met five people, including the founder, and we discussed roles and responsibilities, as we hadn't spoken once until then. The last round was with the manager himself, and I appreciated how he kept it practical instead of relying on "storytelling" examples, which many companies do.

I was given a broken system and asked to troubleshoot it, which I successfully did.

Few days later, I received a response saying, "they have decided to fill the position internally." This was really disappointing, as it felt like a total waste of time if they were still undecided.

Chef questions, some Linux troubleshooting.