Really enjoyable process, but large disconnect between recruiters and engineers. Feedback was contradictory to what happened in the interview, which left me with more questions than answers.
TLDR for Snyk: Focus on making sure your interviewers and hiring managers/talent partners are aligned on expectations. So far, from everyone I know who has interviewed here, it's a string of negative experiences. Don't advertise a pair programming step if your engineers are not pair programmers - it's a negative experience for everyone involved and a waste of both candidates' and interviewers' time (who really felt like they didn't want to be there).
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Process is simple and really progressive (on paper):
- Talent partner chat 👍🏻
- Take-home PR review, related to dependency trees - really good challenge, feels relevant and is interesting 👍🏻
- Review the PR with two engineers who go over your comments and then get you to implement *something* in relation to your comments/the problem you were given, described to me as a pair programming interview.
My personal feedback received:
> 'Everything went great and feedback was perfect but because I didn't include an edge case in my initial implementation in the 30 minutes it's a no' (mind you this is a tree traversal with additional factors, without going into much detail, we also went over our time, I had a job to get back too myself and I have questions to ask the interviewers).
As I was programming and chatting with the interviewers, we spoke about the edge case and added pseudo code on how the fix could be implemented.
2. We spent a lot of time talking system design questions which resulted in us being short on time to do the pair programming, so interviewers need to time keep a little better, save the system design questions for the system design interview.
3. It was described to me as pair programming, yet the entire interview was more of an exam and perfection is needed - choose one or the other.
4. If a single edge case is the reason why you're rejecting candidates (according to feedback, see other reviews below), you're going to have a tough time looking for someone who wants to join you and grow. If you're looking for just coders who can 'just do it all' then you have entire software houses of contractors who will just write the code you're expecting using AI tools.
5. The interviews said for me to fix the most important issue to *ME* in the PR. The TA partner said to emphasis on testing. The engineers did not care for testing, but had a specific issue they wanted me to look for. Which is fine, I get it but more disconnect.
The premise for a really good interview process is there, but your engineering team is letting you down. They seem unmotivated, angsty, and are looking for reasons to fail candidates. There's a clear disconnect between engineers and talent partners.
I think for Snyk to really excel in finding the right candidate for the growth they're going through, stepping back and internally training engineers to be better interviewers could be a good start.
After all, I probably would interview here again! Everything has the foundations of a good role at a good company but I'm slightly put off by internal attitudes and disconnect between process and engineers.