The interview process started very professional and efficient. My screening interviews went well but this was to be the end of my good experience. The trouble started when the Dept manager apologized about a "new initiative from above" that they "hated to have to do" but "had no say in." - a HackerRank test.
Immediately the hiring manager failed to deliver a link prior to going on PTO, the Dept manager (second interviewer) ALSO went on PTO and when I reached out about the promised testing link, momentum was lost due to PTO and a lack of response from *both* until they both returned. This blew my window to sit down for a 2 hour test due to new work that came in. When I finally received the test link, I asked if there was an absolute deadline and was told "there was not" and "not to worry" as they weren't about to rush hiring. However this turned out to be untrue when about a week later they wanted to know if I was still going to take the test and move forward.
To make matters worse, the test itself was technically problematic. There were:
- issues with shell rendering in my browser
- a lack of an interactive shell for the Python portion, and lack of standardization overall.
- silent (DNS) failures resulting from invasive telemetry being flagged by publicly available basic blocklists (I employ to keep my work computer that connects to clients safe) and that looped me back to the start of applying for the test.
- general AI monitoring alerts and distractions
To make matters worse, few of these issues were present in the HackerRank provided "practice" test to evaluate your system and settings.
The questions weren't terribly difficult and consisted of several sections:
- bash scripting with interactive shell
- an awkwardly worded simple python question with *no shell*
- systems engineering and k8s MCQs
- a design whiteboard.
Questions were often awkwardly and confusingly written. To add to this, HackerRank mandates that you not run any other software, open any additional tabs, windows, etc and lets you know your system, webcam and audio are being monitored - this means no outside materials which also means if you forget *exactly* the syntax for code or fail to solve it in *exact* way they wanted you would fail.
I locked in on a particular problem that continuously failed to resolve in accordance with their solver, and missed a few questions. The next day I received a polite, but non-descript rejection. I never heard from the Dept manager, again, and was given no reason for the rejection nor any further communication when I reached out to thank both managers, as well as explain some of the technical issues I ran into.
