30 minute call with an engineer discussing experience etc, casual chat really nothing of note, went well really nice person.
5 hour long process (a lot to ask of someone given you'd need to book time off to do this)
At the start of the sprint in a day you get put into a call with product, and two engineers where you draw up some user stories, its very one sided and not very collaborative, if you don't do this on the regular and have it nailed down I recommend practicing this flow as there isn't much to bounce off.
The next 2 hours is the live "pairing session". If you haven't strictly practiced TDD recently then don't bother. I did TDD for 4 years at the very start of my career but last 3 years has been quite different. The pairing was more one sided and I felt like I was directed in a path that didn't suite my personal pairing style, there wasn't much understanding from the fellow engineers on being rusty especially in an interview environment.
There was a few times where I would get stuck and It felt like instead of pairing it was more of a technical exam and they we're just watching me, not too much back and forth as I would like in a pairing situation.
With about 40 minutes left in the coding session they shoehorn in system design questions, no architecture or planning just some generic questions somewhat targeted at the task, felt like it didn't add anything and just threw me off given when I was told to prep for system design it was not what I expected at all, but it wasn't bad at all in terms of technical complexity of the questions.
After this you get a 30 minute call with a few of the engineers, and this is where the red flags started for me, One of the Staff engineers was really engaging and open and great to talk to, the other 3 just really didn't seem like they wanted to be there, and I can get it to an extent, I didn't feel welcome and felt like I had to bring all the energy to the meeting and not much back and forth at all, pretty bland all in all and didn't seem like a positive vibe it this is the kind of personalities in the teams.
After this is a 30 minute call with a high up manager, talking about motivations and such, generic behavioural questions to be expected.
In the end I didn't get the role, TDD is where I fell short, My mention and explanation of my hiccups seemed to just be ignored and not considered at all in the feedback which just shown me that they're not willing to hire a passionate engineer with a solid CV and experience for something as trivial as TDD as if it takes an engineer a life time to build it up again...
