I applied via their website and received feedback after a few days to have an initial 30 minute zoom call with their talent partner. This was pretty relaxed and helped cement that Geckoboard sounded like a decent place to work, with a focus on people first, sustainable & considered growth and excellent work/life balance.
The next stage was a 40 minute zoom call with the hiring manager to discuss my experience and projects I'd worked on. This was also pretty relaxed and positive.
A take-home coding challenge was the 3rd stage. I was asked to implement a gauge fetching data from an API using technology that I was comfortable with. This was OK but it took me longer than the recommended 3-4 hours. It also felt more like a test of trigonometry rather than front-end development skills.
I didn't receive any feedback about the coding task other than it had been reviewed and they'd like me to proceed to the final interview. Communication around this stage was unclear from the outset. The job listing describes the "final" stage as a "meet the team via Zoom video call - about 2.5 hours". Unfortunately, this had morphed in to 2 "final" interviews the first of which was a discussion of the task from the take-home coding challenge with some live "paired programming" with 2 senior engineers to add a feature. If I'd had this information upfront I would probably not have applied for the role or at the very least requested accommodations as I know from experience I do not perform well under such unnatural, pressurised conditions.
Further, I was not put at ease during this interview. One interviewer lost interest quite early during the live coding and was swinging in his chair looking bored. I was fully aware this interview did not go well but I had hoped this could be offset during the second final (?!) interview scheduled with two members of the product team a couple of days later. I received an email from the talent partner that because of my "technical skills" the next interview was now cancelled.
The feedback I received was based solely on my performance in the pair coding section of the interview. Clearly there is a type of person that they are looking for for this role. If a persons entire career and achievements are discounted on this basis I'm actually pretty relieved to have been considered the wrong fit for this role and company.
