Capitol Canary Interview Questions
& Process

I applied online and heard back the next day to schedule an in-person interview. The first interview was on a Friday and had a sales/biz dev person, two engineers, and the company President. Some of the interviewers hadn't read my resume. The President asked one question about referrals and seemed focused on avoiding a recruiter fee. The interview ran long. I got a call the next day (Saturday) for a second interview on Monday. This second interview was more structured with two groups of two employees from different teams. They asked technical and non-technical questions. Again, nobody had read my resume, but they did ask about my knowledge of the company. Everyone seemed really into the company and its mission. Then I met with the CEO, who was aggressive and asked quasi-technical and non-technical questions. I then talked with the President, which was a bit more comfortable. She gave positive feedback but mentioned offering a much lower salary, which felt like bad faith negotiation since I didn't have an offer yet. She also noted my lack of a college degree made me worth less, ignoring that a co-founder/former CTO also dropped out. After the second interview, the company was silent for over a month. When I asked for feedback, they implied they still hadn't decided. My overall impression of Phone2Action was negative. Based on the technical questions about unit testing and code quality, I suspect they have unreliable code and push for features at the expense of reliability due to fast development and developer pressure. The head of Development (they don't have a CTO yet) asked how to guarantee exponential LOC output, which shows ignorance of software development realities. It seems PMs are pushing developers hard, using the 'mission' as motivation. Developers I spoke with confirmed long hours and below-market pay without equity. The President tried to downplay a $45,000 salary cut by highlighting 'fringe' benefits.

The interview process felt really rushed and not very thorough. I was actually surprised at how fast they made an offer, it was a 30-minute call and then about an hour in the office where they mostly asked the same things. After I got the offer, I asked about a salary increase, and although they said they'd look into it, they ended up giving the offer to someone else instead of getting back to me. Plus, the recruiter kept sending emails with typos and that were hard to understand.

The interview was on-site with two engineers and an executive. The questions weren't too difficult, but they wanted to see how you think through web development and software problems like an engineer. You should be ready to talk through your thoughts and show your general problem-solving skills.

I found the fellowship on their website and sent my CV via email. Then I got a reply to schedule an interview. The interview was with two people, one from operations and one from engineering. They were both very considerate and respectful during the process!