1. intro call with HR
it was fine, but the HR person had limited knowledge about the position and was unable to answer some of my questions. they said they would get back to me on them, but didn't.
2. home task (time-limited to 2h from start)
2 tasks, one frontend and one backend. i liked the tasks, they were relevant to the position and adequately challenging. however, i never received any feedback, i was just informed that i "passed" to the next stage.
3. tech call
this was one of the worst interviews i've had. it had 2 parts: first technical questions about code they showed on their screen, then 2 live coding tasks.
the main issues:
- examiner mindset - for the technical questions, the interviewer was specifically looking for a "keyword", instead of wanting to hear my thinking process. for example, i described in detail why i would refactor the code and what i would do. however, that was not good enough, because i didn't mention "dependency injection". on the next question, the interviewer cut me off after my first words - i mentioned "single responsibility principle" and that's all they cared about.
- inadequate tasks - for the live coding, there were 2 tasks: 1. fix a bug with useEffect in a React component. 2. reimplement Promise.all. the first task was ok, relevant to daily web dev work and i completed it without much trouble. the second one was about under-the-hood workings of a native function, which is not something you ever do on the job, and i required some help to complete it. i believe it was that second task which made them reject my application, and i fail to see how this would be relevant to my success at the job.
- unexpected questions - i was not expecting live coding. in fact, initially i had no information about the content of the tech call. after pressing the HR person, i was informed we would go over some code on the screen together, but they didn't mention that i would actually have to do live coding.
- during the tech call, i was expecting we would go over my home task and i would explain my thinking process and my architectural decisions. instead, it's like they had never even seen my home task. in fact, i'm pretty sure it had been reviewed by somebody else entirely.
- rude interviewer - there were two interviewers, one of them was nice, but the main interviewer was simply rude. he didn't even say hello and went straight to questions. after the interview, he simply said something to the effect of "ok that's it, we'll be in touch, bye". no space for me to ask questions.
