I interviewed with Atlassian for 8 weeks starting in June 2023 for a Principal Data Engineer position. Below were the stages of the interview involved: - 2 Coding interviews 1 System design interview - 1 Backend craft interview - 1 Data engineer craft interview There were 2 additional stages - values and manager interview which I didn't get to. I met a couple of great interviewers who had the right maturity and fit for how interviews should be conducted. They asked hard questions and were professional and clear in communication. Barring those interviewers, below were some of the highlights of the horrible experience that I had: - I met an interviewer in one of the coding interviews who didn't even know how to speak in clear English. He looked disinterested and had the worst communication that I have ever seen in the IT industry in my career. At the end of my interview with him, I was in a state of shock and was wondering how this person works at this global company with such communication standards. - The final data engineering craft interview was the highlight of the entire process where I met a female engineer who had an interview structure containing 3 parts - 1 data engineering architecture whiteboarding, 1 SQL section containing 3 questions, and 1 Leetcode medium complexity problem (merge-intervals) to be completed in 60 minutes. The SQL questions were at a level that even interns could crack them. Due to limited time, I was able to come up with both brute force and optimal solutions to the Leetcode problem within 10 minutes and write pseudo code and complete the SQL questions along with whiteboarding the data architecture of a past project and talk through it. Once we finished the 60 minutes, the interviewer requested if I could stay for more time to which I agreed. We went over for another 30 minutes talking about data modeling concepts and technologies and development practices for data engineering teams. The next day when I got the feedback from the recruiter, it was trash full of lies and incorrect feedback. She rated me a level below the position I applied for absolutely no reason. It felt that she had made up her mind from before and had no maturity in picking up signals in a technical interview. I even requested to take another interview with someone else in a similar position as I knew that the feedback was dishonest. I could only hope that the interviews are recorded and someone could playback the recording and review it. In the end, I was extremely disappointed and wasted 8 weeks of hard work on this interview only to be left at the mercy of a dishonest and immature interviewer in the end. Here’s what I want to tell you, Atlassian: - Stop putting interviewers on your panel who cannot communicate in English clearly. Train them thoroughly before asking them to interview candidates. It reflects the maturity of your own values that you preach about. - If you are not serious about hiring, don’t scam candidates by taking them through a rigorous interview process and then keeping positions open for months later. - If things have changed during an interview process, such as - filling a position due to an internal move or hiring an overqualified candidate for the position that you interviewed candidates for, be honest and say that instead of lying. - The times we are in will change over time but if you continue conducting interviews in this manner, what would you have done to your reputation (already going downhill) - Finally, it might be time to look at some dead wood sitting around who are preventing some fresh blood from coming in and can add a lot of value to the organization.