A brief screening conversation with a recruiter followed by an hour-long technical grill from a principal engineer with zero feedback. The process was entirely automated through Greenhouse with literally no human conversation outside of the interviews. All of my responses to the machine's "excitement" to move forward were met with silence. The technical grill session with the principal engineer was a series of 20-30 questions asked in succession with no feedback or resemblance of a human conversation. I could have been talking with a robot for all I knew. Over a week later, I received a rejection letter packaged as an ad from their partnered recruiting platform. Somehow, they believe selling my data to a third party makes the pill taste sweeter. All in all, the process was the worst in class - a fever dream of the worst possible experiences one can achieve on the web.

Smart, effective, efficient. After a couple of initial informal video chats with managers, a set of interviews was scheduled over a period of about a week. Because the entire process was done remotely via video, this worked well for all parties. In those interviews, I spoke with a total of six OpenTable employees, each of whom was friendly, open and well-prepared. Because of my extensive experience and endorsements from shared acquaintances, there was little in the way of technical questioning. Instead, the focus was on looking for signs of a good fit of technical philosophy and work style.