Polly Interview Questions
& Process

A recruiter reached out via LinkedIn. There were 7 interview rounds in total, including with the hiring manager, a take-home assignment, a panel interview, two rounds with cross-functional teams, and a final round with the Head of Product. This whole process spanned 1.5 months. Everyone seemed impressed with my skills and expertise up until the very last round. Then, unexpectedly, the HR person let me know I was rejected, stating my experience didn't align with the job requirements. It's quite frustrating that it took them a month and a half to realize this, especially after I invested so much time in the interviews and the assessment. I don't believe this is a fair experience for any applicant.

The interview process involved an HR screen, an interview with a peer, and finally an interview with the hiring manager. The first two stages went well. However, the interview with the hiring manager was scheduled, then rescheduled after being cancelled just 5 minutes before it was supposed to happen, pushing it out by two weeks. The hiring manager was late to the rescheduled interview and then twice called me by the wrong name, once at the beginning and again at the end, blaming it on a blurry Zoom screen which didn't make sense. This clearly indicated they hadn't reviewed my resume, despite having it for over a month. At the end of the interview, I was told I would proceed to the next round. But on Monday morning, I received a generic rejection email instead of a call from the recruiter.

It started with a recruiter call, then an interview with the hiring manager, followed by a peer interview round. After that, there was a take-home assignment, which led to a presentation round. Then, another round with Dev/Platform Engineers, and finally a round with the CTO. Overall, it was a pretty standard process for a Security Engineer role, and they moved quickly, which was nice. Polly did a great job keeping things speedy but not rushed. The interviews felt fair, not just grilling sessions. They did their due diligence, which is always appreciated. Obviously, I'm biased because I got the offer and am starting soon, so it was worth it. Austin A. is an amazing recruiter and really on top of things.

So I kicked things off with a quick recruiter chat, just the basics on my background. Then they shot over a coding challenge by email. It was pretty straightforward, and the instructions even let you check your own answers. After that, I had a phone chat with a couple of engineers who hit me with some standard questions about my past work. A week later, I went in for an on-site. Honestly, it was pretty standard, but surprisingly light on the actual technical stuff. One engineer asked some really odd questions, like my favorite Python feature, and seemed unhappy with my answer about appreciating its elegance, pushing me to list technical features instead. The only real technical part was a quick architecture question from the VP, which I fumbled a bit, but he was cool and helped me work through it. Everyone was super nice, made me feel like I could hang out with them all day. But then the CEO pulled some aggressive tactics, which I really didn't like and kind of soured the whole thing. I got the vibe that work-life balance isn't a thing there, expecting 50-hour weeks, which is maybe normal for the Bay Area but not what I'm after. I backed out before they made an offer because I had a better opportunity come up.