Fast (CA) Interview Questions
& Process

The whole thing took like 2 weeks. Had to do a homework assignment for frontend/backend, then a system design interview for frontend/backend, and a coding interview for frontend/backend. Also had a behavioral and values interview with an EM. It was a really weird process overall, felt like the interviewers and recruiter weren't sure what they wanted. The offer was super shady too, the numbers kept changing. They were totally unclear about the ISOs, wouldn't share details to understand the compensation. They told me to value shares at X price with Y strike price instead of (X-Y) * # of ISOs. Recruiters were awful, never called when they said they would, and communication was terrible. Too shady for me, not a good experience. Be super careful.

A recruiter reached out to me on LinkedIn in late September 2021. I was interested but told them I needed leadership opportunities with pay matching my experience. They said they could meet my salary needs. Communication was slow and sometimes a leader had to reschedule and showed up unprepared. There were long gaps (1-3 weeks) between interview steps, so much so that the hiring manager forgot our first meeting by the second one. The whole process felt long and like they didn't respect my time. It started with an HR screening (30 mins) in late September. Then an interview with the hiring manager (30 mins) in early October. After passing that, I got a big case study with a few exercises and process flows (3 hours). Once the hiring manager reviewed my slides, I had two more interviews in mid-late October with a potential direct report (30 mins) and a potential collaborator (30 mins). Then in early November, I interviewed with the hiring manager again (30 mins) and a senior leader (30 mins). Because the senior leader was unprepared the first time, we had a second meeting (30 mins). In total, I spent about 6.5 hours interviewing. At the end of November, two months after starting, I got an email saying they weren't moving forward but were impressed and wanted to stay in touch. I asked for feedback but never heard back. They then reposted the job soon after. I was uneasy about the case study because I worried they'd use my work without paying for consulting. I've interviewed for director roles before and never had to do so much work upfront. I'm hesitant to do that again.

The technical recruiter was really great to work with, super professional and responsive. I got to meet the rest of the team too, they were really personable and seemed genuinely interested. I really liked how engaged everyone was and how well they represented the role and the company. They were also really flexible with interview timing and managed to set up back-to-back interviews since they're trying to fill this role quickly. Even though I didn't get an offer, I did ask for feedback from the recruiter and the hiring team to understand why I wasn't a fit, but unfortunately, I didn't hear back. I would have really appreciated that feedback as it would be super helpful for my future interviews. Overall, it was a positive interview experience.

The overall interview process was okay. I started with a technical screen with a senior engineer which went well, and they were quite friendly. After that, I moved on to the virtual onsite interviews. I had good conversations with most interviewers, but my last coding interview was a bit rough. The task involved some HTML/vanilla JS, and the interviewer offered very little guidance. They didn't seem very engaged and when I asked for help, they just said I needed to figure out what was wrong. It felt less like a pairing session and more like being watched struggling with a challenge that isn't really relevant to the actual job. Despite this, most other interactions were positive, but I ultimately didn't get an offer. I've also heard some negative things about the company, so that's something to consider.