Entire hiring and interview process is slower that a snail. I had my initial phone screen with the HR representative in early November 2018. Immediately after which was given a coding test on hacker rank to test basics of python and Linux skills. After clearing the first coding round, had a second one in the last week of November, testing algorithms. The team took 2 months to evaluate and give the result. After these two, I was told there would be an onsite interview involving 5 rounds, each being 45-70minutes long. They flew me to their office in Santa Clara.
Onsite was scheduled on a Monday in early February 2019 . The first onsite interview was another test, on the lines of Big data to develop an ETL application, was required to carry my own laptop with a local environment to be setup in advance. After the test was a managerial round with someone who seemed senior, mostly involved my work experience and primarily architecture. I was required to whiteboard a project I worked on describing a data-pipeline and various tools used. This followed a technical 1:1 with another senior engineer also focusing primarily on architecture. So far got positive feedback for every rounds kept me motivated. For the 4th & 5th rounds the interviewers were a no-show. The executive assistant apologized and said the following rounds would be done on skype the following day or the day after, giving me a number to reach in case of any difficulties with the videocall or scheduling in general.
The next two rounds were scheduled on Wednesday afternoon. The 4th round was mostly relating to infrastructure and tested skills on best practices. Which build tools I preferred and how I would tweak current certain ETL jobs for efficiency. I have had experience in a production environment and I was able to answer all questions confidently.
The 5th and final round was awful. I thought they would re-schedule as the individual was 20 minutes late. I immediately reached out to the assistant who said that the individual supposed to be interviewing me had bad incident, got robbed/lost his work laptop. I was told the interview would still be conducted and he would use the assistant’s system and begin the next round. After being 25 minutes late he was very arrogant. He had a middle eastern accent and his tone seemed highly frustrated. He seemed highly un-prepared and was condescending. He began belittling every skill I possessed, only bragged about his previous work and how similar it was to what I'm currently doing and how terrible my current work is. The call was done in 15 minutes and he hung up, never gave a change to speak. They could have always re-scheduled but the individual seemed forced.
The recruiter got back to me the next morning and gave great feedback and said they wanted to make an offer. I requested him to provide me feedback on every single round. He replied "highly knowledgeable", "experienced", "recommended for hire" and we discussed compensation and re-location. He said he'd get back to me that evening, but delayed it to the following day. He even emailed me over the weekend. Finally, on a Monday evening, at 5pm sharp sent an email we are not willing to move forward with your application. Never gave any explanation why they went back on their word. It was total waste of my time and energy and were highly disrespectful.
