(1) A 30min phone conversation with one of their recruiters.
We had a brief phone conversation about the company and my background, why I might be interested, what I'm looking for next in my career, and the general boring questions that everyone is sick off. The recruiter however sounded like a nice person.
(2) Home exercise (completed in a week and sent it to them).
Nothing to add here. They sent me the requirements and a week to complete it.
(3) Phone conversation with a Director asking general psychological and HR questions.
This Director sounded like a really great guy and I felt very comfortable being myself and honest with him. However, over the phone this person made sure to point out that only a tiny percentage of candidates make it through their interviews, which sounded very elitist in my opinion and very out of touch. Anyway, he sounded like a nice guy I thought... so let's move on.
(4) Onsite with about 5 rounds of interviews (about 3.5hrs).
Throughout the previous steps I was told that the technical questions would be related to the code I submitted with the exercise. However, only about 30% of the questions were about my code, the rest were questions about how I might build an imaginary app, which they drew on a whiteboard with some lines and boxes. I had to constantly pull teeth out in order to figure out what they were asking me. Although their technical interview involves a take-home exercise, the rest is a pretty dry and uninspiring process that involves imaginary web apps and trick questions. No whiteboard coding though, only drawing lines and talking.
Although the technical interviews weren't what I expected, in general the Developers seemed like ok people and understanding for the most part. Up until this point I still cared about the opportunity, but I stopped caring as soon as the Directors and Managers walked into the room. It's really hard to put it into words but I'll try to explain how I felt.
I felt like the Directors and Managers I interviewed with were pretty delusional about their culture and who they were as people. I felt like they were putting up a fake show of "everyone here is kind, empathetic, sympathetic, amazing human being, smartest, blah, blah, blah...", while constantly contradicting themselves and asking me personal, non-empathetic questions about my career. I felt that if I worked there, I would always have to wear a fake smile in order to meet their "culture" requirements. Their culture talk seems like a BS filter of "if you don't think like me, act like me, or see the world like me, then you must not be any good". I wouldn't buy into such elitist and narrow-minded culture. It seemed like a very fake and unauthentic place to work, so even if they offered me the position (still waiting for a response), I would not take it.
