I had a few interviews:
- the first one was with a co-founder. It was actually more like a discussion rather than interview, which is very nice and low stress. We had discussed where Snowplow has been and wants to go and it was about the same for me. It was a very human interview with a solid discussion.
- The second interview was with the other dev of the team. It was a 1h30 long interview with a live pair coding session. I was sent the task upfront and I could decide whether I wanted to work on it before the interview or not. I had decided to prepare for it.
It was a great interview. We started with a general chat, then talked about technology things. Those questions were not about bullsh*t detail things that you can just simply ask google or algorithmic tasks, it was much broader about software, programming, infrastructure...
Then, there was the live pair coding session. I would select a task from the test and implement it. I do understand that some people are getting very stressed about this kind of interview and that it can lead to a silence of death. Though, don't stress, nothing is perfect and in one hour, it is sometimes not possible to reach completion. The most important is to explain what you are going to do, why, how, debate some choices or alternatives... This is what you are going to be judged upon.
In the end, I really liked this technical interview because I could see who the other team member is, how he thinks, how we interact, if we connect... This is in my opinion something that is clearly overlooked by candidates. The synergy and social aspect of team working is truly important, possibly more than the future tasks in themselves.
I then had a last chat with the same co-founder I had spoken to. We again talked about many things and dealt with paperwork.