dv01 Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process started with a 30-minute chat with a recruiter, followed by a 60-minute call with an engineer. The next step was a take-home assignment where I had to build a table with filtering in React, using a mock API. Things mostly went well until the take-home part. The mock API endpoint provided by the engineering team was broken, sometimes skipping data or returning empty entries, which could cause issues in a real application. When I brought this up, the engineer's response didn't seem to acknowledge the specifics of my feedback, requiring me to explain it twice. I initially thought it might be a simple mistake, but then I received feedback that my app's data was incorrect, suggesting my work was more suitable for a mid-level role, not the senior position. I was surprised because I had tested the app thoroughly. Upon following up, I learned they expected totals based on all available data, whereas I had paginated the data and displayed totals for the current page, a decision noted in my ReadMe and code comments. I explained this, pointing to my documentation and comments, and asked for reconsideration. However, a few days later, they decided not to re-evaluate. The assignment instructions encouraged detailed code comments to explain decisions, which made the situation ironic, as it seemed they hadn't carefully reviewed my documentation or code, instead making assumptions. While such situations occur in engineering, a key aspect of a strong engineering culture is adapting to new information. Coming from a non-traditional background, I felt marginalized by this experience, questioning how a company advocating for diversity could have such a seemingly biased interview process.

Started with a quick chat with the recruiter to see if I was a good fit. Then, after the hiring manager looked at my resume, we had a phone call. The manager liked what they saw and decided to bring me in to meet the team. The in-person part took about 3 hours, meeting everyone on my team and some folks from other teams too. A few days later, they said they wanted to move forward and sent me a take-home project that was related to the job. I presented the take-home project to the hiring manager and another team member at a coffee shop, it was pretty casual. They gave me an offer pretty quickly after that, like a day or so.

A recruiter from dv01 messaged me on LinkedIn. After that, I talked to an engineering VP, then did a data exercise, and finally went onsite to meet 6 people. Even though there were 4 stages, it only took 2-3 weeks. They gave me feedback super fast after each step before the onsite, and I heard back about the offer within a day of finishing the onsite. The onsite interviews were long but well organized. One of the interviews was a product demo which was really helpful to understand the company and its product. All the interviewers were coordinated so they didn't ask the same questions. dv01 really cared about the candidate experience and making sure both sides learned a lot about each other.

First, a recruiter call. Then, a take-home assignment that took about 4-6 hours. After that, an onsite interview which included a technical part where I talked to engineers about my assignment and how I'd extend it or trade-offs I made. There was also a behavioral part: a PM asked tell me about a time questions, and the Eng Manager asked tell me about a time questions and what if scenarios. They totally ghosted me after giving a really lowball offer, and the equity was super bad, like only 2-5k for a senior role at a startup.