Unlike many large tech companies, the process here begins with a hiring manager interview rather than a technical screen. The hiring manager had a long tenure with the company and some background in native Android development, which felt like an unconventional fit for evaluating an iOS candidate.
The conversation was focused primarily on past work history rather than current technical capabilities. He clearly seemed unimpressed. There were also some misconceptions that came up during the discussion — for example, around how A/B testing operates at large tech companies, where dedicated platform teams typically own the underlying experimentation frameworks. Engineers consuming those frameworks are not always expected to have deep knowledge of how they are built internally.
For a senior engineering role, I think a more balanced process — one that includes a dedicated coding or system design round first —this would give candidates a fairer opportunity to demonstrate what they can actually do today. Assessing fit based heavily on judgement and presumed background, rather than demonstrated ability, can overlook strong engineers who simply come from different paths. Not reaching a stage where I can showcase my skills and capabilities due to perceived judgement was the harder part to reconcile.
