GameChanger Interview Questions
& Process

The interview process had two steps: first, an audio call over Microsoft Teams, then a behavioral chat with the HR manager. Neither round had any tricky or unexpected questions. The most critical thing to be ready for is knowing your resume inside and out. Be super familiar with your experiences, the results you achieved, and what you want to talk about, because the questions will mostly come from what you've already written down. It wasn't super technical or about specific situations, just a smooth, confident talk about your background and if you'd be a good fit.

The interview process was pretty unstructured and not really aligned with what you'd expect for an engineering manager. The final interviews didn't really get into the specifics of the job description. It was weird because three of the final interviews asked basically the same things – they should have just done a panel instead of making me do redundant 1:1s. The main focus of many questions was how I handle uncertainty and work with other teams. While those are important things to ask about, it felt like they *only* asked about those two topics and didn't really try to get to know me or my background. It honestly felt like every other department just wanted to make sure I wouldn't mess up their work. Plus, most of the people I talked to weren't even in my area or didn't seem to understand the role I was interviewing for, so their questions were a bit out of left field and it just turned into a guessing game. The feedback afterwards just confirmed these issues. The HR call was intense, they really scrutinized my answers. It felt like they were just looking for reasons to pick me apart without giving me a clear way to answer. Then, during that feedback call, they said I used offensive language in one of the interviews. Turns out, I used a standard term in project management and engineering that's in the PMBOK and tools like Azure DevOps, and one interviewer made a big deal about it. Misunderstandings happen, I get that. But what's really concerning is I never got a chance to explain. I was blindsided with an accusation that questioned my integrity and professionalism, with no chance to defend myself. That was super disappointing and ironic given how much they talk about communication and collaboration.

The interview track was standard: recruiter, hiring manager, a take-home assignment, and then a panel interview. In total, four interviews were scheduled. The first two were technical and happened on the first day, and the next two were culture-focused and scheduled for the second day. I was told that I'd only proceed to the second day interviews if I passed the first day's. The first interview was an hour to review the take-home assignment, which was submitted as a GitHub PR. After that, we had to add a new feature to the assignment in a paired programming session. They mentioned it was okay if we didn't finish within the hour. The interviewers liked my detailed PR, and we finished the whole task with time left for questions. Before coding, I outlined my plan, which they said was good. The second interview was a bit strange. I was given a single sentence (copied below) and then an awkward silence for a few seconds. They said it's usually a whiteboard exercise, but since it was remote, they used a Google doc for notes instead of an online whiteboard app. Because the 'question' was so unclear, I asked many questions and made some incorrect assumptions, which they corrected, and we continued the discussion. I felt it went okay. Less than an hour later, I got rejected. They offered a feedback call, which I accepted. I thought the problem might be with the architecture interview, but I couldn't figure out how it went so poorly that I didn't even get to the culture fit interviews, especially since everyone emphasized culture fit as the top priority. The feedback I received felt completely out of touch with my experience. They said I was unprepared for the PR discussion (because I took 30 seconds to reorient myself?), got stuck during paired programming (really? was it because we debated the meaning of a poorly worded function?), didn't ask clarifying questions during the architecture discussion (impossible not to!), and didn't think high-level enough, getting too caught up in network code details (they gave no indication of what they wanted; I'm an app developer, I discussed app architecture, not backend server protocols). I tried to express my concerns after the feedback, but they cut me off and hung up. In my career, I've never felt so blindsided by an interview. On the plus side, at least I won't have to work with them. There are several negative reviews for iOS roles at this company from recent years, and they all seem accurate. Save yourself the trouble.

The interview process started with an initial screener, followed by a conversation with the hiring manager. After that, I was given a take-home assignment, which I thought was a reasonable way to assess my thinking without it being like a free consulting gig. Then, I had interviews with four other team members spread over two days. About a week later, I heard back that they had decided to hire someone else. What was really cool was that the recruiter reached out afterwards to see if I'd be open to a follow-up chat. This is way more than I usually get, as most places just send a generic rejection email. During that call, the recruiter shared more details about where the other candidate was a better fit. They also mentioned background checks as part of the process.