Granular Software Engineer Interview Questions
& Process

I talked to a recruiter, and then they gave me a coding challenge. After I submitted it, the recruiter set up a call. We chatted about my past experience, and then they said they'd give me a front-end coding challenge. But I never got it, and after a week or two, they let me know the role was filled.

The interview process involved an initial call with the recruiter, then a conversation with the hiring manager, and finally a lengthy 4 hour 45 minute on-site interview which included two 15 minute breaks. Some parts of the interviews felt a bit awkward due to slow speech and long pauses. I had asked about the coding environment and if there was any specific preparation needed. I was told to be ready to clone a repo, which I assumed meant we'd work from a project. Turns out, that was incorrect. The interviewers expected me to have a project already set up using a tool I'd never used before, and it wouldn't even work on my machine. I really wish I had asked what tools I'd need to prepare in advance. I felt blindsided and like the interview was over before it started, especially when I was expected to use a framework I wasn't familiar with in a way I'd never encountered.

I applied on their website and heard back from a recruiter within two days to schedule a call. That call was about 45 minutes, covering the job, benefits, and salary. A couple days later, I had a 45-minute phone chat with the hiring manager about the mobile team's technical work. Then came the on-site, which was about 4.5 hours total. It included another 45 minutes with the hiring manager, an hour lunch with the dev team, and 45 minutes of Q&A with them. I also spent 45 minutes with the DevOps team. Oh, and I did a take-home coding challenge, which I think they used to monitor my problem-solving process via VPN. It took me a few hours because the VPN was slow and unfamiliar.