This was the most grueling tech interview loop that I've experienced. The entire process took 11 hours and 4 weeks end to end.
It consisted of:
- A 30 minute screening Zoom interview
- 1 hour interview with the design lead
- 1 hour interview with the CTO
- 4 hour take home design exercise
- 1 hour design exercise review with the design lead, CTO, and and lead engineer
- 1 hour follow up interview with the design lead (where I sent references... and they checked references BEFORE giving me an offer)
- 4 hour virtual onsite interview interview loops with 2 engineers, the CTO, another set of engineers, a meeting with the partnership and sales lead, meeting with the CEO, and a closing meeting with the design lead
The design lead informed me that if at any point during the interview process they felt I wasn't the right fit, they would end the process.
The questions were standard. Nothing was out of the ordinary.
The biggest standout of the interview process was at the very end with my meeting with the CEO, Sarah. Her eyes were affixed to the bottom corner of the screen the entire time. She needs to disable her self view in the future, or atleast move it to the top near her webcam.
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In the end, the feedback I received was that the team felt that some of my answers stayed too high level and not "specific enough" with real world examples. When I asked for when that happened, I was not given a specific answer.
I should have followed my gut stopped the interview process at the design exercise. This is a red flag for immature teams and orgs. However, I've been out of work for 2 months. I had no choice but to go with it.