acknowledgement. Glassdoor helped me, now I give back to the Glassdoor community
Goodnotes has writing down culture, I am doing so, even though in their external sites (here in glassdoor).
Generally personal level, good interview experience face to face.
But the company start to see problems in terms of Value and Ethics
Advise for interviewees:
They can hold you up for up to a week (with appology) even they know you have an offer,
and then turn you down.
The interview:
First you can either do a take home assignment or replace it with a live coding section
Year ago already 'failed' takehome version without knowing why. Now pick the latter instead.
You have to implement a counter that increases as the user operate.
A interviewer deemed great to work along with. Not much of a problem here.
Next is a coding interview and the interviewer was remotely working in another country, had some small talks about the virus and the tech stacks after the coding test. Need to write up and zip the code and mail back. The interviewer even made a mistake in evaluating my solution and I found the bug and fixed it before moving on another coding question
The final interview, the interviewer panel are polite. Asked you some behavioural questions.
In the middle, the interviewer asked you if you have other offers, I told them I already have an offer.
Final interview was also a video one, the interviewer, the sound quality is bad ONLY in this round.
The interviewer said the results would be fast/quick (i forget which exact word). Few days later, I emailed them I was going to turned down the OTHER offer. But after a whole week, they decided to turn down my application. Worst happened. Slow to respond and damaging to others. Interviewer claim to be fast but the actual is slow
The decision makers appeared somewhat has made disputable ethical decision to hold up a candidate, knowing he or she had an offer but turn them down at the end. So they accept the general behaviour to hold up someone. Future candidates will be acceptable to hold up Goodnotes for at least for up to a week (with appologies), too.
According to a recruiter who worked with goodnotes, goodnotes used to be good, and quick respond, loved tech geeks.
A quote from famous philosophy:
"act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.”
Or in Chinese proverb (translated due to glassdoor does not support), "the other day your body will be the same"
Interviewer impression:
All in all, the interviewers are approachable and appear friendly and polite, feel good if can be future colleague, but the decision making process
i.e. the management is perceived to forget the company value and general ethics. But these are signs that either or both
1. the company is going to grow into a tech giant
2. the company is facing financial difficulty
In the email reply to turn me down, the reason is that
the team was already stretched and can only afford to hire someone with stronger foundations in backend engineering who can hit the ground running.
This sentence in itself seems not problematic, but given the open statements about the company culture (cited from the company's blog in titled "how we work at goodnotes" (please web search it because glassdoor disallow links) last checked on 27th May 2022:
'''This doesn’t mean that there is no room for mistakes. The meaning of ‘best’ itself can change and is fluid. The important thing is that if we fail, we can try again. Our organization and every team member is learning. We are doing things that we have never done before, which is why you need to be open-minded and be able to listen to different opinions.'''
Huge inconsistency against its public image. This hire itself NEVER accept
learning, no mistake allowed and need to hit the ground running. No learning.
This hiring is going AGAINST the company value and we NEVER shows any signs during the interview process. And why can't they hire a few more headcounts to share the project? It seems to suggest the company is facing financial difficulty. Especially the NASDAQ index is facing an alarming low that may scare the management to prudently hire someone already know everything, just contribute and learn nothing from his/her role.
It's disappointing, not because rejected, but the final decision making process/reason.
Some skeptics/conspiracy theories below:
If the project is so important that does NOT allow growth and learning, why not state it on day 1/ job ad?
Or is it the company need to collect data for hiring for them to learn how to hire without the real need to hire?
If the company is really learning, will they learn from this review? Interesting to see if they are open minded.
Maybe quite astonishing for anyone to see my small interview to have so many implications/analysis.
