Every employer underestimates how big their take-home projects are, but Philo is particularly bad on this front. They claim that their take-home should take "3-4" hours, but it took me significantly longer than that. There's three reasons for that: 1) they ask for a LOT of functionality (IMO they could cut the scope by 50-60% and still get a strong signal), 2) the spec is (probably intentionally) poorly defined, and you're supposed to spend a bunch of time clarifying it over Slack with an employee, and 3) they encourage you to add EXTRA features to "impress" them! I spent way more time on it than I wanted to, and still got a rejection with no feedback. I wouldn't apply here unless you're ok with really devoting serious time to the take-home (like, a week+ of unpaid work.)

Had a call with the hiring manager then immediately with an engineer to go over technical experiences. Soon after, was given a take home challenge and put into a slack chat with another engineer. This is where there was some issues and red flags. The engineer was extremely vague in answering the questions and gave "maybe" responses. I was not able to get a single straight answer to my questions about the requirements. The other main issue was that the coding challenge sent was outdated (libraries/tools are many years old; yet the engineer said it was fine to upgrade/update) and there were no clear instructions what you can't do. Even the engineer wasn't clear on what you can't do. We scheduled an on-site and last minute, they pulled the plug with no real details or specifics. Massive waste of time. If this is how they treat candidates and based on the kind of engineers I was put in contact with, then I don't want to work here.

I was referred to by a recruiter to this company and this particular position. I was supposed to get a call at 2pm and I waited for about 10-15 mins. The hiring manager at this company then told my recruiter that he did not believe that I did not a call despite me sending them a screenshot of my call history. He claimed that I had ignored him and therefore refused to communicate further. I believe that this is extremely unprofessional. I am taking this as a positive experience and am glad to not be a part of an unhealthy environment. Please watch out. I was supposed to talk to the Head of Recruiting, a person representing the company as a whole and for him to behave in such a way was nothing short of unprofessional.