Direct Technology Interview Questions
& Process

Went in for a Help Desk Tier 1 role, but they put the job on hold for some reason. The interview was great though, held in a nice building downtown. The head of IT and his colleague were super friendly and easy to talk to. Honestly, it was the best interview I've had. We chatted a lot, and it felt really comfortable and friendly. I left feeling super confident, like I had it in the bag. The plan was for me to move into Tier 2 after this Tier 1 role, but with this hold, I'm just waiting to hear back. I'd definitely interview with them again!

So I'm a self-taught junior guy with only 2 months experience when the recruiter hit me up (didn't even apply). He was super chill, mentioned they only pay $20-25/hr, and we moved to a phone screen. He wasn't technical, just wrote down my answers. I think I did okay, got asked about classes/OOP, abstract classes, overrides, polymorphism, WCF services, and threading. Didn't nail everything but got most of it. Some general coding stuff and some specific to the job. I was kinda wary because of Glassdoor reviews but figured why not, I'm early in my career. Then came the next interview stage. They said it'd be a 'simple test' to print text, and I totally guessed Fizzbuzz. Yep, it was Fizzbuzz. The recruiter watched me code it and timed me, then two guys joined – a tech lead and a manager. We did a test debugging a broken web app, keeping it running as it broke and fixing it. I breezed through the early parts but struggled with the later ones, which is understandable with only 2 months of .NET experience. I was just checking this role out. Then the tech guy talked about their work and tech stack, while the other guy grilled me on personality and work style. That part was rough, honestly. The second guy had a bad attitude and confirmed the bad reviews. He was like, they use Fizzbuzz 'cause some people 'can't code their way out of a paper bag'. He really pushed me on how I'd handle coding 'without requirements' and similar stuff to see how much work they could get out of me. It felt like a chop shop, and it makes sense they're hiring juniors when they need mids or seniors – they probably can't keep good people in a toxic place. A day or two later, they said they weren't moving forward. No worries, I didn't expect to get it with my experience. The tech guy seemed cool, like a bearded nerd I'd learn from, but the other guy was a red flag for a broken company culture, so I'll steer clear. They mentioned heavy regex use for file translation, which sounded interesting, but the test didn't even touch on it, which is a shame since I'm really strong in that from my previous web dev experience (Perl, PHP, JS, etc.). Otherwise, the technical part was surprisingly sensible, especially the broken web app test, which felt relevant to the job. It's weird that a company with such a bad reputation has a decent technical screening process, unlike the algorithmic puzzles and whiteboard nightmares I hear about elsewhere. Those Glassdoor reviews also felt fake, which was another big red flag.

I first talked to a recruiter for the company, who was a nice guy and gave me a shot even though I'm junior level and the job was more senior. But then when I got onsite, it was a different experience. After a fizz buzz programming challenge, two managers interviewed me. One was yelling at me for not knowing certain technologies, and the other just looked at my resume without saying anything. The angry one was looking for a specific skillset, but didn't need to be so mad. It wasn't a good first impression.

I had a phone call with a recruiter on the first day. Then later that day, I had a more in-depth phone interview. They scheduled face-to-face interviews for the next day. On the second day, I interviewed one-on-one with the Recruiter, Project Manager, Sr QA, a developer, BA QA, another developer, another Sr QA, and finally the director. Each interview focused on different things like testing philosophy, compatibility, technical skills, and communication ability. I had a job offer waiting for me on voicemail when I got home.