[sorry for lack of paragraphs, but it looks like this web form doesn't support formatting] There’s a harsh reality to interviewing with start-ups: If you don’t interview well, you run the risk of getting walked out early. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen all that often because it’s not fun for either side (for the last year, we’re talking about a < 5% occurrence rate here). I won’t deny that we have a very high bar, and there’s only so much one of our engineers can screen against on the phone before we invite someone to interview with us on-site. Sadly, sometimes people don’t interview all that well in person. And this scenario can be especially tough on someone who doesn’t even realize how poorly they might have done! To them, I’m sure we must look like the bad guys. And I’m terribly sorry about that =/ Moving forward, I’ve already taken some steps to embrace the valuable insights from this candidate’s feedback (ignoring the cathartic parts): 1) We’ve decided to switch the order of our technical interview around to discuss the take-home assignment first. This candidate was correct in feeling frustrated about putting work toward something that didn’t materialize. And we’re going to avoid that happening again in the future. BTW, I also offer people the choice of coming in for ~ 2.5 hours (for the technical phase only), so the time commitment is mitigated, on the slight chance that the interview ends up not going very well. But this candidate chose to try to get it all done at once (and ended up taking a bigger risk for it). 2) I’m also going to be much more vocal about the warning I give candidates re: the potential danger of walking them out early if things don’t go well. I glossed over that with this candidate (based on strength of resume), and it came back to haunt me. If anyone has any questions or concerns re: this situation or would like me to clarify any part of my statement, please feel free to email me to schedule a time to chat: John Delaney (johnd@tellapart.com. PS, I also offer to give people direct feedback re: their interview with us. All this person had to do was call me for that feedback. Instead he/she chose to vent on a public forum. If you choose to interview with us, you will get that same level of access and visibility re: your performance. There’s really no guesswork involved here …