Federato Interview Questions
& Process

So I interviewed for a Senior Forward Engineer position and the whole process was pretty organized and moved along nicely. I went through three main stages before I withdrew: first a recruiter screen, then a manager interview, and finally a coding interview. I passed all of those and was set up for a system design round, but I decided to pull out. My experience with the team was great though. Kraig and Iram were super professional, open about the job, and just really nice people. From what I gathered, the product is really interesting and seems to tackle a genuine problem. But after thinking about everything, I realized this wasn't quite the right fit for me career-wise right now. It was just about my career path, not anything wrong with the company or how they did things.

The recruiter was great to work with, the best part of the whole experience. There were 3 interview rounds, and for the final presentation, I had to give a lot of details like they were going to hire me, which isn't that unusual. Some things about the interview process raised concerns for me though. It felt like they were more interested in getting ideas than actually seeing if I was a good fit. The overall vibe was way too sales-y instead of collaborative. I know not every job is the right fit, but the lack of openness and agreement made it clear this wouldn't be a good culture fit for me. Companies that care about integrity usually get good people, and it was obvious this wasn't the kind of place I'm looking for.

The whole process took a while, over 50 days in total. I talked to a third-party recruiter first, then the company's recruiter, the hiring manager, another person from the marketing team, and a sales leader. After that, I had to create a one-hour GTM presentation and present it to two marketing team members. The final step was a chat with the CEO. The CEO made some comments that really stood out to me as red flags. He straight-up said employees need to "grind" and that many hard workers "don’t survive." When I asked him what he meant by "grinding," he mentioned working 60-70 hours a week. He then kinda backtracked, saying people often think they work more hours than they actually do. While I'm used to putting in long hours, I don't want to be at a company that praises or glorifies 70-hour workweeks. He specifically pointed out two senior employees, mentioning they have young kids and he's unsure how they manage – implying how they juggle being parents and working at the company. That comment felt out of place, and I'm concerned the company doesn't really support family life. He also said the team was finishing an off-site and he was giving everyone a "quiz" on what they learned, and he planned to share the results with department heads. He added that he didn't want it to seem like a "witch hunt," which, honestly, didn't help ease my mind. He mentioned they were giving away two $15K vacations to the top performers on the quiz. While that sounds good initially, it made me wonder about their spending habits and financial sense. All in all, I think Federato has an amazing product, and I truly liked everyone I interacted with during the process – up until the CEO conversation. They have significant market potential, but I'd really advise anyone considering the company to carefully think about whether it's truly the right fit for them. I had talked myself into wanting this job, but looking back, I think I was lucky to get out of it. The CEO also mentioned that he was giving the team a "quiz" on what they learned from an off-site and would share the results. He mentioned two $15K vacations for top performers on the quiz.

The interview process started with a recruiter call that included some SQL questions, followed by a hiring manager chat. Then there was a technical screen focused on SQL, and another one for statistics. The next step was a case study with the hiring manager again, and it finished with a culture screen with the CTO. I only made it to step 5 though. The recruiter had hard SQL questions, like asking for only rows from the first table when using a left join, which was weird for the first call. They were looking for a Sr/Staff Data Scientist but were hiring for a Jr-level Data Analyst role and pay.