This was honestly the best interview experience I've ever had at a tech company (and I've interviewed with dozens). I interviewed for their Senior Android Engineer position (although most of their engineers are generalists / full-stack). There were two initial phone screens: one with an Engineering Manager and one with a lead Product Designer. It was fairly casual -- they asked me about my background and my experience at my previous company. We also chatted a lot about the product and culture at Threads. Next step is a two-day working interview where you actually get PAID to work with them for two days! It's a model I've never encountered before, and I absolutely loved it. I got the opportunity to build a real feature, attend different meetings with their engineering / product / designer teams, and do a demo at the end. It was a real hands-on experience for me to understand how their product development process works, how their engineering teams work, how they collaborate, and what their culture is like. It was truly enlightening, and I felt like the interview was a two-way experience because I was also gauging what it would be like to work for them. I wish more tech companies followed this interview format!!! You get a much better signal from a candidate this way instead of using the usual data structures / algorithms questions. They also really care about the people they hire. For example, when I received the offer, I asked them if they could sponsor me and my partner to move to Canada. They went out of their way to accommodate my situation and booked a meeting with me, my partner, and their legal team to address our concerns. It was so touching, and I never had a company care so much about their candidates before. Even though I ended up accepting an offer at another company (on a VERY thin margin by the way, it was such a close call), I absolutely love Threads -- the people, the product, the engineering quality, the culture. I'm deliberately keeping in touch with the entire team so that I can revisit the company in the future. :)

- Call with Recruiter - Call with the founder - 2 Day working interview where you are expected to remove yourself from your job and other responsibilities so that the team can "see what it's like to work with you". You are compensated for it, but it is still a lot to ask from a candidate and is a D&I barrier because a lot of people aren't able to take 2 days off work without short notice. - I suggested working three hours every day after work which they agreed to but then slammed my calendar from 6:00-8:00 PM with meetings after a long day of work. I assumed it would be a more take home style assessment and final demo/presentation. - I sent them a note withdrawing from the interview process for the above reasons and because I had a lot going on at work at the time. - They INSISTED on coming up with an alternative interview process *just for me* to help get "signal" about the parameters they normally judge in the working interview. - After a MONTH of this back and forth and about 7 interview rounds, they tell me that the interview process that they designed off-the-cuff didn't give them enough confidence about working with me. One of the founders asked me an interview what I did and what my company worked on and when I told him, he said "oh, we tried that product but it was fairly straightforward so we rolled our own". Talk about being highly dismissive. This seems like the typical Silicon Valley Bro-run startup that has a drawn out interview process for self-aggrandizing purposes only. I wouldn't recommend joining this company if you're a minority in tech looking for your time and inputs to be valued.