I had a phone screen with the HR representative and then was scheduled for an in-person interview on a second phone call wherein she said that the in-person interview would consist of 45 minutes to 1 hour where she would ask behavioral questions and the senior developer would ask coding questions.
She had asked me to bring my own laptop with the Ruby on Rails environment already installed to the in-person interview and I told her I couldn't because I only have a tower. She seemed a little irritated that they would have to provide me with a computer with the environment already installed. She then sent a confirmation email saying I would need to use my own personal AWS account and create a Shopify account for the interview.
I asked other developers from my boot camp about this and my husband (who has been a developer for 10+ years) and they all said that this is an incredibly inappropriate thing for them to ask. AWS and Shopify charge for certain uses even with the free tier and they both require to have credit card information. It would not be difficult for the company to set up dummy accounts for candidates to use.
So I wrote back to the HR rep that I am happy to use any mock/dummy accounts that they will create, but that it is inappropriate to expect candidates to use their own personal developer accounts. She responded saying that she is sorry to have offended me (which was annoying because I didn't say I was offended), but no other candidates voiced concerns and that we did not make a good first impression and canceled the in-person interview.
Anyway, I think that this is a small company that is not very experienced in interviewing and they don't quite know that what they are asking is inappropriate. I am sure the other candidates did not voice concerns because they are super green or newbies and didn't want to be assertive. But really -- developers should never be put in a situation wherein they are utilizing their own personal developer accounts and exposing their own personal information during an interview. This is bordering on some illegal behavior that the company doesn't quite seem to understand is illegal.
