After a quick chat with a recruiter then another with a lead designer, I was sent to their studio. The interview was pretty much typical UX design interview — having whiteboard exercise, behavioral questions, and smartphone/ app experience questions. The interview wasn't difficult but was long (they didn't really care if had a break between interviews. ) and exhausting. It took a while to get the final result.

After telling me they wanted to move forward with an offer, I was asked how much I'm making currently so they can use that as a basis for their offer. This is an incredibly regressive way to approach salary negotiation, and how wage gaps persist, especially in underrepresented groups in tech (of which I belong to at least one). Recruiting dragging their feet for a couple weeks, then declined to meet the salary range I asked for because it was "just not possible" and made me a lowball offer that rested solely on my current salary. No thank you. Weeks after I declined their first offer, oh! All of a sudden we can meet the range you requested! How about that. If HTC's recruiting team had met my very reasonable requirements right off the bat, I would have happily taken the position when I was first offered it a month prior. Unfortunately for them, in the time between offer #1 and offer #2, I had received a job offer from another company that I ended up taking, due in part to the other company's willingness to negotiate swiftly and transparently with me.