I applied to the engineering apprentice cohort which focused on recruiting for inclusion and diversity. I applied hours before the deadline and was notified 3 days afterwards to submit a coding challenge. They gave me a week to prepare for the challenge, but the actual challenge was a four hour window.

Two rounds of onsite interviews and two phone screens. The first phone screen was the recruiter, the second phone screen was the same recruiter following up after three weeks (it was the holiday break so I gave her some slack). I then had two on sites. The first one was with three people, the second on site was with five people. The questions weren't hard and everyone was very nice but it was a bit ridiculous that the interview process required me to talk to 7 different people over a period of almost two months. I then got an offer that was about 20k less than I currently make. That's pretty ridiculous. Why run people through the interview process that's very long and laborious unless you can at least get close to their current salary. Mind you I have told the recruiter from the start what I made and she didn't indicate it was a problem at all. Once I told the recruiter I couldn't accept for that low, they raised the salary by 5k only and said that was the final offer. 5k?! The company raised 200 million dollars and you are trying to move budgets by 5k? It seems very silly to me. The recruiter then got very pushy and honestly was the worst recruiter I have ever worked with (and I have been working in Silicon Valley for over 10 years). The recruiter then told me she took a 50k salary cut to be a contract recruiter at Pinterest. Well that's just ridiculous, just because you made a silly salary decision doesn't mean I should. I also thought their 401k and health benefits were pretty crappy. For such a cash rich company, why not invest in employees? Overall the process was very long, the recruiter wasn't nice, and the salary was peanuts. My friends were all impressed that I got a job offer from Pinterest but at what cost? Not being able to pay my mortgage and the recruiter being rude to me? No thank you.