Interview process was hiring manager > cultural view > meeting the director > technical review
The first meeting with the hiring manager was simple. She frankly said I would be a good fit and all I needed was to be able to do some python. The next two interviews were good and I had good vibes.
But then came the technical interview. It was sort of disorganized.
For one, the interviewer would change the senecio midway through my response, so it was hard to keep track of what he was asking for. He asked what I would do in a situation of a compromised host, to which my reply didn't include re-imaging. he asked why I didn't mention it and I made the mistake of not point out the he chanced the scenario halfway through my reply into one where the host cannot be taken off-line. Overall, it felt like I was chasing a bumble bee.
The second part of the tech interview was a coding exercise. The questions were super simple but the interviewer kept interrupting, kept writing content in the shared IDE so my curser was being shoved around, and would correct me before I had a chance to review.
Basically, I felt that the technical reviewer wasn't organized and got in the way a lot.
I'm sure I could have gave better answers, and if that was the case I would be fine their decision to not move forward. However, looking back at a few things, the whole situation has left a major bad taste in my mouth.
Here's a summary of why:
1) I was told the decision was to be made on Friday when all parties met for discussion. My interview ended late Wednesday at close to 5pm and I got the phone call Thursday morning at 10am. So I can assume they didn't spend much time going over things.
2) towards the end, the technical interviewer said "we're over time, but I want you to have a chance to ask me questions" so I asked 1 question (we had at least 40 minutes left). On my 2nd, he said "sorry but I have to cut this short and drop early, I real do have to go" and he quickly left. Felt kind of like I was being shoved right out the door.
3) when I asked the recruiter what feedback the team had they said I should work more on my coding. Look, I'm not a professional developer but I can write code and I had solved their practice problems. The feedback felt like a made up excuse and that hurt.
As someone that feels like companies pass them over for jobs that I can do this one stung a little. I really thought that early morning call was going to be good news but it wasn't.