So I recently had a tech interview with their CEO and senior developer. It started okay with general technical questions from the CEO, which I was more than happy to answer. I don’t recall a single question I couldn’t answer. I mentioned a few technologies that they weren’t aware of, to which the CEO commented that he is learning something new and would like to “steal” some of my ideas. Then when it turned to the senior developer it immediately took a dark turn. His first question related to the management structure of the startup I was looking to leave and then the revenue model??! He had no technical questions for me. He then proceeded to show me a pr which was using Flask. I’m not overly familiar with Flask and it’s not on my CV so I answered all the api related questions as best I could, thinking that’s what they were after. I did point out that there are certain things I don’t know as Django does them differently. It’s obvious to me now that developers with less technical range cannot accept that there are other technologies or ways of working. They will judge you according to their tech and their patterns only. Then when it was my opportunity to ask questions, I enquired about their use of Docker. Whilst he admitted to using it they didn’t find the need to use it in local development. Whilst that’s of course fine, I did find him very defensive and not particularly open. He provided me no opportunity to explain how I use it in local development. This was a bit concerning. A few days later I got a rejection email, saying I don’t have enough experience in Flask and that my experience in a startup means that I don’t have a broad range of technical experience. It’s outstandingly bad that you would test a developer on a call on a stack you know they don’t have experience in. I would never expect a developer to do well in this, especially after a lengthy discussion beforehand which never covered Flask. Considering that Flask is a lightweight framework compared to Django, this test makes little sense. The feedback about broad range of experience I think was a deliberate dig. Everyone knows that working in a startup gives you unrivalled experience in a very short period of time. I would love to know what experience they think I’m lacking, considering I’ve done frontend, backend, devops, and product management. It’s beyond ludicrous. My only takeaway away from this and the senior developer’s questions is that he didn’t like my profile from the get go. I don’t know if he felt threatened, but there’s no excuse to how you handled that interview and the subsequent feedback. If this is representative of their current technical team, I don’t think a developer would do well in developing their skills here.