I applied through a staffing agency. I interviewed at Exa (CA) (Toronto, ON)
Interview
15 min interview about personal experience ending with a simple tech question. First technical interview 45 min an easy question followed up with optimization. Scheduled second technical interview also 45 min. Interviewer didn't show up. Rescheduled the interview the interviewer still didn't show up. Withdrew l my application due to this unprofessional practice.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Exa (CA) (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2026
Interview
A recruiter reached out because I have deep experience at web crawling. I said I'm happy where I am, but they kept following up so I decided to give Exa a chance.
First step was an online technical interview but interviewer didn't show up.
Rescheduled and the interview turned out to be unrelated to web crawling, the experience they were apparently recruiting me for.
Next step was an onsite in SF. At this point I didn't have enough information to decide if interested, but open to hearing more and had some friends I wanted to catch up with SF anyway.
Unfortunately the onsite was a waste of time. They just gave me a project to work on in isolation for 2 days, which again was unrelated to web crawling. I could have done this from home.
They didn't try to convince me about the position or share what challenges I could help them with if joined. In fact they actively discouraged me from joining. The guy evaluating me made hostile comments such as "people from my current workplace ruined the company culture".
At no time did anyone try to evaluate my experience at web crawling, the skill they were supposedly hiring for.
The one positive point is I enjoyed chatting with people during the meals.
To save everyone time I considered cancelling the rest of the onsite but was concerned whether they would still pay for my return ticket, so stayed until the end and worked on my own projects.
Turns out this was a valid concern as after returning home they did not respond when I tried to get an expense reimbursed.
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