The interview process, from start to finish, was a refreshing change of pace and one that ultimately helped me decide to take the offer.

The first stage was a take-home coding exercise, consisting of building a widget akin to one you might find on the Zillow site.

Next came a phone screen, which was done via HackerRank. As fate would have it, my internet connection went down right as the interview was about to begin. I emailed the interviewer, asking for patience as I tried to tether my phone. LTE was strong enough to conduct the interview, and the interviewer was incredibly understanding throughout. The interview itself consisted of several questions, both on CSS styling and JavaScript functionality.

The in-person interview almost didn't happen. I arrived 30 minutes early for the interview, and the power went out in the entire downtown area 4 minutes after I arrived. This, combined with the internet outage from the phone screen, briefly had me thinking the universe had other plans for my employment.

After my first 1-on-1 started, we were interrupted and told everyone was being sent home for the day. Not having additional personal days to take, and a vacation that started the very next day, I didn't want to delay this stage any further. I asked if there was any way I could continue the interview. The team agreed, which was an especially big ask since the air conditioning was also out, forcing subsequent interviews in the loop to move to increasingly larger rooms to avoid the heat buildup.

None of them allowed any of these circumstances to hinder the interview process. All of the technical questions were creative and more relevant than I had been used to. Most importantly, the interviewers made me feel completely at ease every step of the way.

There was a question about writing a function to optimally fill a webpage with an array of rectangles of different sizes.