Terrible Interview process, emphasis on automation and filters over finding quality people.
The first step is a skype interview, with someone. This person may be American, outsourced, or from some random part of the world. They ask you simple questions about what you want for next role. Basic screening questions.
The second step is an automated coding task. Whilst these aren't bad per se, a lot of companies use them to filter out mass amounts of candidates. They also don't really tell you anything. The person who does well in this type of test, has only shown they are good at code puzzles. This means very little when building out a professional application. More importantly, unlike other systems, this one has no submission archive system. This means no possibility to submit code and keep working on it(Think hackerrank). So once you submit, you are done. I happened to be extremely unlucky in the codility algorithm draw, since all my questions were expert level. They required some insane tree traversals, graph theory, divide and conquer. Absolutely nothing in those questions was geared towards day to day engineering. They also don't tell you that you only need to score well on 2/3 of the questions. I mean, when I was doing Amazon, and Microsoft interviews, the questions were still hard, but looked like kindergarten questions in comparison!
Whilst toptal says they hire the best 3% of developers, this is a massive lie. They simply find excuses to deny as many applicants as possible. Even if you somehow manage to pass the first 2 screen, and the project, and god knows what else they throw at you, there's virtually no guarantee they will accept you. Even assuming you do get in to the network, there is no guarantee of a job either. You are merely given the chance to enter a network to bid against other freelancers, for the possibility of applying for a contract. Of course, then they client can give you yet another test. So you're interviewing to be given the opportunity to interview again?
