I'm a senior female back-end engineer and I spent 8 weeks interviewing with Pirate Ship. I would not recommend this interview process. I am not experienced in PHP as my focus has been on distributed real time systems, but in spite of my experience level, the company used this as an opportunity to treat me like a junior developer. There is zero diversity on their interview panel and the tone reflects it. They provided me with a vague technical challenge and asked me to iterate on it after I'd finished (which I did graciously). In the end they didn't like my solution and treated me like I didn't follow instructions, even though feedback and expectations were extremely vague. They also told me I would need “months of ramp-up" for PHP, which felt like a setup to either reject me or justify a low offer, especially given PHP’s simplicity as a stack. Their website boasts about culture and diversity, but based on my experience, this is performative. I hope the company takes steps to make their hiring process more transparent, inclusive, and respectful.