Screening call with in-house recruiter: Pleasant conversation. This is basically just to check you're who you say you are. But all the same the recruiter was great to talk to. 1:1 with a manager: Exceptionally nice conversation. Speaking about the work, the project, the company's success, and how one can find ownership in the product. Full-stack take-home project: A full-stack Kanban board with varying levels of acceptable completion. We're talking about a full REST API with NestJS, a SQLite database connected through TypeORM, a full React client with react-query. I have to say, this project lead to me firing hot on all cylinders like no other previous take-home project. But it was absurdly massive. I had to learn three new, significant modules for the Node backend alone. I was going by a deadline set by myself to beat a promised incoming offer. In 4 days I wrote code for around 50 hours, including an all-nighter from 8am to 9am to write the front-end alone. I wanted to do it my way, to a level I found acceptable as an experienced professional. I was stuck nearly an entire day trying to figure out how to connect SQLite to TypeORM v0.2 to NestJS correctly and how to properly unit and e2e test them. Code review panel / culture fit: I was flattered that my challenge project was "one of the most impressive" they've ever seen. I had a chance to talk effusively about my choices and work and it was all a lot of fun. Culture fit portion was pretty typical, just chatting about past work experiences and the like. Not many straight-up STAR-style questions but more conversational. I enjoyed the interview. Interview with CEO/: I figured only people who reached this point were essentially just crossing the finish line and collecting the trophy. He was a pleasant fellow to talk to and shared some of his pride but also stress of his position, going into how much work is involved with running a company that has appeared to grab the bull by the horns and is now holding on with a white-knuckle grip. The one annoyance I'll admit to was the fact that this CEO interview happened on a Monday. I emailed my contact on Wednesday and didn't receive a response. I spent the entire week and the entire weekend reenacting the El Chapo in NARCOS waiting meme wondering what my fate was to be. "No way they'd take this long to say 'no', right?" "They must be figuring out an offer?" It was tough. The only way I could withstand it was to presume I had the job. To appear cool and collected I refrained from emailing on Friday. In retrospect that was a mistake. On the following Monday I finally emailed a second time. Within 10 minutes I received a reply saying "sorry". They thought they had emailed me on Thursday and that they were going with someone else. They assured me I really did impress them. I have no hard feelings. I really don't. It's clear they're going through a hiring frenzy right now so sometimes emails can be missed. But there's one thing you should not do to someone who's unemployed: Forget to tell them that after the final stage of the interview that they did NOT get the job. I couldn't bring myself to reply to the message and just archived it and crossed Flashtract off my OneNote. It really hurt.