I was initially excited to apply to this company since it seemed like a really fun place to work in Irvine based on the pictures that were on their website. I applied to this position via ZipRecruiter, and saw that they had seen my resume within a few hours, and even gave my profile a “thumbs up”. However, I didn’t receive a message from them, so after a few days had passed, I decided to apply again through the email listed on their website. In hindsight, this exchange was pretty strange, and probably should’ve been a yellow flag. They got back to me this time within a day and I was able to schedule the first round interview with them.
The 1st half of the 1st round interview was the typical get-to-know-you session, where the 2 interviewers asked about my experiences on my resume, and let me ask questions about the company. The 2nd half of this round was a coding question, where they asked me to unpack a payload of serial data. This was a fairly straight-forward question, and luckily I had dealt with a similar problem at my current job, so I had a pretty good idea on how to implement it. I was able to implement a working solution, but they then began to nitpick that the code that I had written (in about 20 minutes, mind you) was a bit hard to follow, and that there was a case that I handled that I really didn’t have to. In hindsight, I probably should’ve taken this as another yellow flag at least, since I hadn’t really received this type of feedback before during a timed interview coding question. Nevertheless, I had at least implemented a function that met their requirements, so I passed to the next round.
The 2nd round interview was one of the most uncomfortable interviews that I have ever had. They had asked me why I’m considering leaving my current company during my 1st round interview, and I had told them that I just wanted to work for a company that had better methods of tracking project requirements and executing projects in general. This appeared to be a sticking point with the interviewers, as they told me that they often face changing requirements in the projects that they work on, and they wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t look to leave if this happened. They actually explicitly told me that my reasons for wanting to leave my current company were “not very good reasons”. In response to this, I shared with them another reason why I was trying to leave my current company: that a coworker at my current company had been a victim of sexual harassment by another coworker, and then fired soon after reporting it to management, while no repercussions came to the instigating coworker. The response from one of my interviewers here was nothing less than shocking. They asked me, “Could it be possible that the roles were reversed?” This interviewer immediately doubted my story, and told me that I was making assumptions about the incident since I didn’t know the full story. This was probably the biggest red flag that I have ever experienced in an interview. Immediately victim blaming and questioning the truthfulness of my story, it was incredibly unprofessional. To make matters worse, I found out that this interviewer would likely be my manager if I was hired onto the team.
The interview went on, and even though they had told me that this round would have more technical questions, the 2nd half of this round was all behavioral questions. I was still in shock at how poorly one of the interviewers had responded to my final reason for leaving my current company, that I fumbled my way through most of the questions, not really thinking of good examples for their behavioral, STAR-based questions.
At the end of the interview, I was sure that I did not get the role, as it seemed clear to me (and clear to them) that I was not a good fit for this role. However, a few days later, I was surprised by an email with an offer of employment from them. I was baffled. Even though it seemed clear to everyone that I wasn’t a good fit for their company, they still extended an offer. However, the 2nd round interview left such a bad taste in my mouth that I ended up rejecting their offer. The amount of red flags that I saw during that interview was staggering, and no amount of pay could make me want to deal with them. Please be wary of this company if you end up interviewing with them…
