A third-party technology recruiter contacted me and recommended this position. It sounded great, so my application was submitted. I was contacted for an initial phone interview which took longer than expected (in a good way! Fun conversation) and I was given a very good idea of what the company had to offer in terms of the job itself and generous benefits. It was determined that I was a generally good fit for the position and I was given an online coding test. I had a hard time with the coding test despite my skill level and experience, but was nonetheless brought in for an in-person interview. The on-site interview was a very positive experience. Their offices are beautiful, and the catered lunch looked and smelled great as I walked by the dining area. Everyone I met with was excited to be working toward the company’s goals, and seemed at the top of their game in their fields. The questions were interesting and relevant, and my responses seemed to be well-understood and appreciated. I believe that my passion for creating products came across, and we had a fun time sharing stories. There were only a few “quiz” type questions, and discussions were mostly higher level. Stating that the online test wasn’t a good representation of the type of work involved in this specific job, I was given a second “live”, in-person test in their office. This involved my interviewer standing next to me at a computer and asking me to write code in real time to accomplish certain tasks. One of them was to make the computer determine our location (latitude and longitude) and if we were in Austin (reverse geo-code lookup) to say “Yay, Austin!” This might have been intimidating for some, and I don’t expect it’s regular practice, but I thought it was super fun and good representation of real-world hacking to get results. And, of course, it showed that I was capable of writing actual code and solving actual problems. At the end of this interview I was told that they had a few other candidates to interview (I was the first, as I recall) and that they would get back to me, via my recruiter, the following week. Late the following week (Friday, maybe?) I heard back from my recruiter that they wanted me to come in for a follow-up interview to meet some other employees, have lunch, and work through a few code issues as part of the team. I came in for this interview and met several more employees. We did a little code review and headed to the dining room for lunch with the entire company, as they all do every day. Just as before, everyone seemed interested in their jobs, more than competent, and just plain nice. One woman even shared some of her vegetarian lunch with me, since these were in limited supply. I felt quite welcome! After lunch a few of us returned to a workstation and did some coding. Nothing complicated, but I helped with a few bugs that they were either experiencing for real or had perhaps staged for my benefit. Either way, we came up with some reasonable solutions and I believe I was able to contribute some good ideas. At this point I stepped a little bit out of the role (interface ‘programming’, not interaction design) they were looking for and offered perhaps a bit too much interaction design advice and an interface idea or two, having solved similar problems in the past. This may have been off-putting to existing staff, but that’s speculation. Just to summarize the vibe, It’s a quiet, open office, with very nice dual monitor setups at each desk. The walls are brightly-painted with inspirational message from respected people (Steve Jobs, for example). Everyone I met was friendly and welcoming. It seems like a good place to work! I was told that they’d get back to me soon and possibly ask me to come in again to meet the CEO. In the end I was contacted by my recruiter to let me know that I was not offered the job. I completely respect this decision. They are a very close-knit, fairly small team and bringing someone new into the mix is an important decision. While the interview process was quite positive, I definitely felt like something wasn’t quite “clicking”, and perhaps this was easy to detect while I was there. And of course, I wouldn’t want to end up in a place where I didn’t fit in, so it all worked out for the best. Don’t let this deter you! If you do interview and ARE invited to join the team, you’ll know that they feel quite confident that you are the person for the job. My recommendation is to go for it! quiteconfident that you are the person for the job. My recommendation is to go for it!