The experience was positive till the last stage, so I don't know - maybe I was just unlucky. But yeah, the last interview changed my impression about the company drastically.
- Recruiter call, 30m: nothing out of ordinary - questions about my experience and what I'm looking for;
- Hiring manager call, 1h: more in-depth questions about my experience - like projects I'm the most proud of and how I approached them. Some high-level questions about specific technologies I have worked with;
- Technical assessment call, 1.5h: 2 interviewers, the interview split into 2 main parts. First is mostly discussing some Kotlin code snippets and fixing/ improving them or explaining how they work. Second is quick live coding in Android Studio - Compose UI task;
- Cross-functional/team fit call, 1h: interview with EM and PM. Here's when everything went south. The intention of the interview was probably to discuss how I usually approach work. I tend to believe that I have experience working in some mature environments, so my answers were reflecting that. Unfortunately, EM went confrontational. It was obvious they did not like my answers. My gut feeling is that they personally like to micro-manage their reports, or the company as a whole is a dumpster fire. Well, even if they are looking for somebody willing to participate in this clown show, negative reaction to my answers should not have been as obvious. Also, it was kinda noticeable they did not want to answer my questions at the end - their answers were pretty shallow, some of my questions were just ignored completely (e.g., when I asked what the success criteria for senior/staff engineers are, all I got was "we have it documented, you'll see the docs once you join us").
I don't know what happened at the last stage. Whether they did not like me because of my preferred work location, nationality, Linkedin photo, or work processes preferences - what's clear to me that I won't be talking to SumUp's recruiters ever again.
