Applied in late Sept. Was contacted a few weeks later to setup a 1 hour video chat. This was with a person who essentially functioned in Bizdev/PM-type role. It was pleasant, but a few basic questions about the company status, market penetration, and vision were met with "hmm... I don't know" responses, which were a bit surprising.
Then I was given a coding test. The test was clever and well done. I enjoyed working on it, spending a few hours on a Sunday. It gave me a pretty positive impression about the type of engineers they hired and I was enthusiastic about continuing with the process.
A few days after the submission I was contacted to do a 1 hour video chat with an engineer. There was no talk about the submission, just chit-chat about what it was like working at the company. It went well enough, but there wasn't much in the way of curiosity about my background or experience.
The next day I was contacted to setup a 1 hour pair programming test. I set it up for the following week. The first ten minutes were spent explaining my solution. Very few questions were asked. Then I was asked to implement a new feature w/ tests. It went well and we finished within an hour. Note: the person doing the eval was a jr. dev w/ 2 years of experience out of coding bootcamp. I was interviewing for a sr. position.
A whole week went by with no response. I sent a friendly reminder to the original person I talked with (the PM guy). Later that day I was contacted by the VP of engineering telling me that I had done well and he wanted to setup another 1 hour interview, so I did. I the interview was pleasant but didn't really cover much new ground. I do pry into how much longer the interview process will go, and I'm told that I may need to talk to another developer and then likely be flown out to the site on the east coast for a proper all day interview. This is the first I'm hearing of this. If you're not keeping count, I just finished my fourth round (5th if you count the coding assignment).
Then another week goes by and I'm contacted by the lead developer. So we set up yet another interview. It went pleasant as well, but pretty much nothing new is gleaned about myself or the company. I'm out of questions to ask. I'm unsure if these people are sharing any of the same notes, because I keep getting asked to run through my background et al. I start inquiring again about the length of the interview, why this is necessary, etc. I'm told that he is the one who set up this oddly lengthy process yet at the same time stays out of keeping track of what's going on. He explains this is to weed out anyone with an ego. Alright.
At this point I lost interest in the position and decided I would stop following up. The following week I accepted an offer at another company. Another week goes by and I get a rejection notice from the VP, of course with little information other than “you’re a talented engineer” and that they went with another candidate.
If there’s one word to sum up my experience and interactions with everyone it would be: mediocre. What a tremendous waste of time. If you have options steer clear of this place.