I did four interviews with people in Edmonton, Austin and Vancouver, and all seven interviewers were completely disorganized and none knew how to do a proper tech interview. First off, despite having interview-management software, no one knew I was coming, and it was evident that no one had read through the job description, my resume or done any sort of preparation whatsoever. They had not reserved any rooms, were unable to figure out how to use their own software to reserve the rooms, couldn't find an available room (despite the fact that most seemed to be empty), couldn't get the video conferencing software working, and then couldn't locate people who were supposed to attend the interviews. As a result, several of the interviews were cut in half due to lack of planning. I was even cut off in mid-sentence when we had to halt the Edmonton interview because the room had been reserved by someone else. For a tech company, you would think they could manage to execute a simple interview schedule.
Even though I had prepared in advance and had written out examples of skills and experience I had in each area of the extensive job description, there was not a single in-depth technical question related to anything in the write-up. For a "Build Programmer" position, this was completely bizarre. The hardest it got was "do you know python". I felt like I had to interview myself, which was very frustrating. Since no one had prepared any questions, each team spent most of their time doing open-ended "tell us about yourself"-type questions rather than ask me hard questions about my skills and experience. No one bothered took any notes either.
I'm not saying I was the right person for this job, although I indeed have experience in all the skills they listed, and I accepted a similar position in a different industry immediately afterwards. I'm saying that it was obvious they didn't seem to really care enough to bother to do a proper interview. This was really a waste of everyone's time. Maybe they had already hired someone and were too embarrassed to say so.
The worst part of this interview no one really seemed to enjoy working at BioWare (with the exception of the Austin team, who seemed genuinely enthusiastic about what they were doing). Although people seemed to be proud of their skills, I couldn't seem to elicit any enthusiasm for working there. The management team in Vancouver were polite, but it was obvious they would have rather been to be absolutely anywhere else, and left me with an overwhelming impression that it was a tedious and possibly stressful place to work. I asked about the rumours of a high-pressure, high-stress environment, and no one exerted much effort in dispelling that perception.
Lastly, after having gone through four interviews, I also would have thought that merited the courtesy of a follow-up to tell me I hadn't gotten the job---but there was none.
