Initial call with internal recruiter who made sure I was a fit for the role, then had a *30 minute* Microsoft Teams interview with two engineering managers. Ghosted after that.
Even though I was a referral, they took over a week to reach out and schedule the initial screen call. It's been three weeks since the second interview and they did not reach out to let me know I did not impress them enough to move forward.
The internal recruiter inquired about my salary expectations, and indicated my desired $180k base salary was "within range" for their Staff Software Engineer pay band. Maybe ask for $190k-200k, I'm guessing that will be at the upper end of the Staff SWE pay band.
The first technical interview included my would-be manager and the manager of another team. They asked me a few questions about what they perceived to be my resume's weaknesses (one of them viewed my LinkedIn profile about 15 minutes prior). So not really looking to get a feel for my qualifications, just looking for reasons to write me off. I guess they probably have 100 other candidates to go through and talking to me was just a courtesy since I was a referral.
When they asked if I had any questions for them, there was about 5 minutes left in the 30-minute meeting, so I didn't really get to ask the questions I wanted to ask, but I was able to get a few in.
I asked them what the team's greatest technical challenge is, to which they said "migrating from Azure Functions to Azure Containers". If true, I felt like the role was not going to challenge me from a technical perspective.
Everyone I talked to at HungerRush talked up the culture, and how it still kind of felt like a startup, although the company is 10+ years old. They indicated technical debt was minimal, although there still exists VB.NET code on some teams. So, typical bloated company kool-aid nonsense. They will probably have layoffs in the next 2 years.
I think someone with a very consistent, very strong .NET web app work history who just wants to write boilerplate and call it a day is going to be very happy here. I think someone who is truly passionate about writing software- the challenges, the creativity, the problem-solving- is going to be unhappy here.
