After I first applied for this job I was contacted by the recruiter who then scheduled a call between him, an engineer and myself. The call went great and we got a chance to talk over a bit about myself, Philo as a company and the role. Then, the engineer and I dived into a technical conversation about a past project of mine. Following that call I got a home assignment to complete in about 2 weeks (though I think it took me a bit more but there was no pressure from their side) and I was invited to a slack channel for any questions I might have. I really liked the way the assignment was built and it allowed me to write code and show my skills in a real scenario and timeframe. The “onsite” (virtual due to COVID) part took place after I handed in my assignment. It consisted of 5 interviews. 2 technical interviews (1 design and 1 was more of a pair programming style), 1 interview in which we discussed the specifics of the assignments and thought of any needed improvements to it, 1 demo of Philo’s product and 1 behavioral interview. Through all of these interviews I really got a good feel of the culture of the company and the people within it. It felt really different (in a good way) than any other interview I did during that time. The last part of the process was an interview with the CTO about was mainly about making sure that what I’m looking for and my goals align well with what Philo are looking for and has to offer (It also included a very small coding question). Overall process was a little long for me, around 2 months (part of it was due to the amount of time that took me to hand in the home assignment) but enjoyable, respectful and felt like you’re being tested for actual skills rather than solving “Leetcode” questions.

The interview process took 8 weeks from the first call to getting the offer. The first call was with the recruiter followed by an engineer, who were both very friendly. I was given a take home assignment that was optional, and scheduled an on site as well. A Slack invitation was sent to me so that if I was stuck on the take home assessment, I would be able to get help/clarification from an engineer. Ultimately, I did not complete the assessment, but that wasn't a problem to them; instead of a code review session as a part of the on-site interview, I did live coding. During the on-site, I was given a demo of the product and had 1-1 with multiple engineers, who asked me technical questions. Instead of the questions being leetcode-styled, where they would ask you a question and just sit there silently, watching you explain and code on a white board, the questions that they asked were more open ended and pertained to real use cases, such as system design/architecture, and felt more like pair programming. My interviewers encouraged clarification questions and discussions, and we talked about issues and improvements to my solutions. After the on site, there was a final round with the CTO that was done remotely, where we went over my experience and what I was looking for, and there was another technical question asked, which included live coding through coderpad. About a week later, I received an offer