tl;dr they cut me off on the onsite after 2 rounds for some arbitrary reason. Regardless of how you look at it, it's just straight up disrespectful.
Applied online, got a callback from a recruiter, was sent a Hackerrank. I completed the Hackerrank, was contacted again to have a call with an engineer. After the call (mostly cultural), I was contacted again to schedule an onsite, which I did.
During the onsite interview, I was supposed to be going through 5 -6 rounds of interviews. What ended up happening was that I got asked to leave after 2 rounds, as I did not meet the technical bar (I was not given any question where it is was possible to do so poorly to merit such a response. I had at least rudimentary solutions for all problems I was given, which means I was near some semblance of a minimum bar). This felt completely disrespectful for 2 reasons:
- It established that they were looking for someone who can vomit out perfect algorithms all day. Not all candidates are perfect; everyone has flaws. What matters the most is the willingness and the ability to work through these flaws and weaknesses.
- It established that they didn't care about the cultural aspects of the interview. They didn't care about my experiences as an engineer, the hardships I encountered, etc. All that mattered was that I wasn't perfect.
Or maybe they kicked me out because someone accepted the position as I was interviewing, which implies poor internal communication. Either way, the way I was treated at the onsite was just straight up disrespectful. The least they could do is to just go through with the onsite process, turn me down, and then provide feedback on my strengths/weaknesses/etc. When I probed for feedback, I got a generic response, and when I tried to probe for more fleshed out, actionable feedback, I'm pretty sure I got ghosted.
