Worked with a 3rd party recruitment firm (Signify Technologies).
Interview Rounds:
- 30 minute technical screen. I was asked about my general development experience and did a very small coding exercise. I asked about any interesting projects the team is working on and they said they weren't allowed to tell me anything. Couldn't even make something up or share general areas of work. The interviewer mostly seemed interested in talking about themself and sounding smart.
- 2 back to back technical interviews. One algorithmic and one system design. The algorithmic interviewer took a lot of time to explore the depth of my knowledge of Scala and was generally friendly and constructive. The second interview was more intense, tight on time, and less collaborative than the first.
- Interview with a member of management. This person seemed largely disinterested in interviewing me (expressed by body language, vocal tone, and interruptions to respond to messages). I get that people are busy, but why waste our time? I tried to press the interviewer on engineering practices and culture and they were largely evasive and didn't have any good things to say about their team. Sounds like the company overworks their engineers (long hours, lots of blame put on individuals) with little appreciation.
- Interview with the CEO and CTO. They were clearly not interested in being present and powered through the interview as quickly as possible. Again, I recognize that they have other responsibilities, but why bother setting up an interview in the first place if the goal is end it as soon as possible? Neither individual was very welcoming or enthusiastic. This was their chance to sell me on the opportunity, culture, vision, etc, but they didn't put any effort into making axoni appealing. Also the CTO didn't speak unless told to by the CEO (his brother I might add), which was really weird haha.
All in all I felt treated with little respect and got the impression that upper management sees engineers as disposable code monkeys who should be grateful for a job, rather than teammates focused on growing a business. Axoni didn't appear to be an enjoyable, healthy work environment, so I passed.