Hiring manager reached out on LinkedIn. Good chat, prompt follow up from the recruiter. Things went downhill from there. First, the onsite was scheduled for 7 days after the screen. It was 4 panels back to back - including a number of the senior leadership team. Lots of prep work to present a technical project I'd worked on. The other technical interviews were confounded by their overwrought Battleship implementation, which was different from the asks in each of the other sessions - by enough that trying to understand the difference between what was being asked and what was given for the tech screen was a major stumbling block. The first round apparently had some follow up flags, so while I waited several days for a reply expecting a yes/no decision, apparently they'd "forgotten" to schedule me with a product manager and the CTO. A surprise round of interviews, no matter how it's framed, is not a good candidate experience. Even after all that, I didn't get an offer. Evidently I did not do enough to make up for whatever flags they found the first time. Feedback for the team: if the answer isn't yes, it's no, and asking candidates for more time when you think it might be a no is a waste of everyones' time. Time mismanagement was evident from the 3-6 people present in each of my sessions. Lastly, they asked me to prep references a week before rejecting me. As though it's not embarrassing enough to be laid off, now I'm embarrassed among the colleagues I told to expect to be contacted. I would describe my experience as disorganized and discourteous of my time. I spent a lot of time waiting with no indication of when I'd hear back. They were friendly enough, but a successful work environment is not what I perceived during my time interviewing here.

Process-wise: 1) Behavioral phone screen, 2) coding interview over video chat, 3) 3ish hour project (prep at home, finish on-site alongside engineering team), 4) on-site behavioral discussions Compared to other interviews I took: - No tricks/gotchas. - Plenty of opportunity to show off what I was good at using tools I was comfortable with; this differed from other interviews where I had to come up on a very specific topic, or was constrained to a specific language, or had to go through the details of a particular math problem that the interviewer happened to be working on at the time. - Better communication from Picnic about what they were looking for and what they valued. This contrasted with other interviews I had where the expectations were a total black-box (and my communication with the company made the process more cryptic if anything). The Picnic interview process was totally game-free. - The post-interview follow up was by-far the most professional I encountered anywhere -- prompt, clear communication, a willingness to answer my questions or find others who could. More than anything else, it was the follow up that grabbed me.