The first serious contact was through a recruitment agency. I didn't get to chat directly with them until the face-to-face.
But I actually applied directly to Zalando months before that. They sent me an unsolicited message on LinkedIn to which I replied with an application, but I didn't hear back from them at that particular time.
5-6 months later, I was approached by the recruitment agency and asked to complete a coding test, which I completed in three different programming languages: Java (my strongest language at the time), Scala and Clojure.
They asked me to complete it only in my strongest language, but I wanted to show my Scala and Clojure skills.
I've let them know about my preference for Clojure, which (I wasn't told) was being decommissioned in favor of Scala. I guess they thought that giving me hope of working with Clojure would help to get me through the door. A pretty dishonest thing to do. Already a bad sign (the first of many).
I completed the coding test and I was told by the recruitment agency that mine "was one of the best submissions Zalando ever received" and they asked me for a face-to-face interview.
The face-to-face consisted of 3 technical interviews with different people followed by a final interview (all in one day, about 30 minutes each).
Overall the people were a bit arrogant (having fancy furniture, bean bags and ping-pong tables around will do this to you, I guess that makes they think they are Google). Discussing the coding test, they already showed, inadvertently, that they don't care so much about the engineering aspects of it (open-closed design, S.O.L.I.D. principles in general, CI/CD, etc). They do care much more about syntax, specifics of frameworks, such as Kafka, and algorithms. After a short conversation, I realized as well that they didn't look at my submission carefully. Most of them probably only executed it to check it for correctness and speed. They only made superficial observations and didn't seem to understand my OOD nor the algorithm I implemented. "Why you didn't use case class?" one of them asked. One dude also asked Kafka questions, even though I made clear beforehand that I didn't know the framework at the time (facepalm). Scripted interview. The second bad sign.
The final face-to-face was awkward. This dude kept staring at me trying to assert dominance. He's shorter than me and physically frail. I'm much stronger and on top of that, I know Jiu-Jitsu. I could kill that guy in less than one minute (literally). I let it pass, though and I was super polite. That was a mistake. The message I sent by being tolerant was "I'm weak and will take your abuse to get this job.". The third bad sign. I ended up paying for this later, as the behavior persisted.
Weak, agreeable people are exactly what they are looking for by the way, thus the intimidation tactics. They started the office in Dublin hiring alphas (which are either in-your-face aggressive or passive-aggressive), now they are only looking for betas and omegas. You will suffer intimidation tactics until you either submit or quit.
Don't let the fancy office and shallow politeness fool you. The reality is harsh on the inside. That was one of the most dysfunctional companies I have ever worked for. I witnessed yelling and even chest bumping (literally) between two other dudes because of a silly disagreement. The kind of altercation you see in pubs between drunks, and they were both sober (I assume).
Some can live with that, unfortunately... People in the office are either aggressors or complicit with a "well, that's how it is in most companies, right?..." attitude, so chances of Zalando turning the whole thing around are slim.
They made me an offer (more than I asked for) and I ended up accepting it. On hindsight, I take full responsibility for having suffered hell during the months I worked for them. I saw all these bad signs during the interviewing process and I chose to ignore them.
I have seen some of their latest job ads popping up at Glassdoor and I could do some math based on the job titles: "oh, this dude is gone, oh, and so this dude, oh, and this other dude...". They have an absurd turn-over rate. Just look at the number of job ads at Glassdoor alone. These can't possibly be explained by growth only. Even saying "most are due to growth" would be pushing the envelope way too far.
Think about the kind of people that stick around and the kind of people that leave in this scenario. It only gets worse...
Don't make my mistake. Don't ignore the bad signs. Be brave. Something better will come by. You deserve better (or not, up to you).