Talked to them at a job fair at my school first. They were aware that I knew one of the higher-ups there. I had one online HackerRank quiz which needed a lot of Java knowledge, but no coding directly. Lastly I went in to interview at their office in Boston for about two to three hours of interviewing. I talked to two engineers (neither technical, just experience/resume discussions), and had one Java code reading/refactoring exercise. I thought the whole thing went quite well and I liked the people there. After that, I was in contact with the recruiters often, and knew others who had interviewed as well. The recruiters strung me and others along for about a month. They kept telling us they would get back to us the next week, then the next, then the next. Finally, around Thanksgiving they emailed me (and I assume the others) telling us that it was the busy season and so they had to have all engineers on deck to handle this. They said they were pausing recruitment until the new year. At this point the whole situation was quite ridiculous and I decided to take myself out of consideration as I had other offers, even though I was fairly confident that I would get an offer eventually. They were a mess throughout the process and my overall impression is not good.

1. Recruiter phone screen (~30 min). Current level and responsibilities, compensation expectations, role expectations, motivation, "why Chewy." 2. Hiring Manager screen (~30–45 min). Fit + scope + project storytelling. 3 behavioral questions mapped to Chewy's 7 Operating Principles. Behavioral is weighted heavily here vs peer e-commerce companies. 3. Technical assessment. HackerRank or async take-home — Python/SQL + ML. Variable duration. 4. Onsite virtual loop (4 rounds, ~1 hr each): - Coding / DSA - ML System Design - Debugging / Testing - Behavioral (mapped again to the 7 Operating Principles) 5. Recruiter close-out call (~15 min). Decision + comp negotiation