The first part of the interview process was promising. I had a system design interview that was well-structured and engaging. I appreciated the thoughtfulness of that session and felt like it was a good opportunity to demonstrate my skills. However, the second round felt very flat. The interviewer read questions directly without much engagement or feedback. It felt more like a checklist than a conversation, and I wasn’t sure if my responses were being heard or considered. The final round was unfortunately the worst. It was supposed to be a combination of live coding and a discussion of my project history, but it turned into live coding followed by yet another system design interview. The interviewer seemed visibly disengaged — making faces, sighing, and even disappearing off-screen during parts of the coding challenge. When I asked clarifying questions about design constraints, I received confusing and inconsistent responses like “use whatever you want,” only to be met with visible disapproval when I followed that advice. It left me with the impression that they weren’t interested in evaluating me fairly, and I’m relieved I wasn’t offered the position. It’s unfortunate because the mission and early interview stages showed promise, but the overall process felt disorganized and, at times, disrespectful.

The interview process was fairly standard with some commonsense differences. I had been unemployed for 5-6 months at the point of the interview, so I had plenty of experience interviewing with a focus on TypeScript stacks (Node.js and serverless with React/Angular/Vue clients). Nava's tech interviews were very comparable but had less focus on tech-specific "gotcha" scenarios that could easily be answered with syntax questions posed to your AI assistant of choice. In the system design portion, it was an enlightening back and forth that allowed me to evolve my answers and adjust my strongly held opinions. It was overall an enjoyable experience from beginning to end.