Substack Software Engineer interview questions

The process felt disorganized and slow. I applied for a more frontend role and was redirected to a systems role. After the initial phone screen there were 8 days of silence, then a manager call, then another week before a technical screen that was 45 minutes. I’m sure the full loop would have stretched into a month or two. What worried me more was the way the team talked about their challenges. They openly described ongoing issues with impersonation and extremist content on the platform, but didn’t sound like they had a clear strategy or ownership across engineering. It made the technical work feel reactive and firefighting-heavy rather than planned. Overall the people were polite, but the interview process and product signals didn’t give me confidence in the org’s readiness or direction.

The interview process followed a standard structure an initial recruiter screen, a technical screen, a virtual onsite with a behavioral interview and a technical debugging session, followed by a final conversation with the CTO. One thing that stood out was that Substack contacted my references before reaching the offer stage, which is uncommon in my experience. A contact within the company later mentioned that they had received great feedback about me However, despite this, I was ultimately not extended an offer. The rejection came via a standard email and when I followed up for feedback, I received no response. While the process itself was structured and professional, the lack of transparency in the final decision and the absence of feedback left something to be desired.