This process was a mixed bag but the onsite was what really soured me. The initial phone screen with a recruiter is typical. Personality questions and questions about my resume. He seemed a bit disinterested and distracted but not too bad. He was a nice guy. Second stage was a choice between a take home assessment or a phone technical interview. I chose the take home assessment. I was given 24 hours to complete it. I liked having a choice. I feel take home assessments are much stronger indicators of a candidate's abilities since it mimics a lower pressure work environment rather than solving some vague puzzle in a time attack fashion. After passing this is when things fell apart. I was invited for an onsite that had two technical components. I inquired about what to expect. It was an Android focused position and I was wondering if I should prep more for that or for general algorithmic questions. After several days without a response, I finally heard back with what was essentially an "I don't know" answer. Before moving forward, the email they send says you have 1 hour for each technical portion but after introductions and general questions, this ends up being closer to 40 minutes to actually try the problem. The first technical portion of the onsite was okay, I guess. The kid was young and he was polite but seemed inexperienced in interviewing. My email said I would be using coderpad to code but I was asked to open Android Studio and share my screen instead. Thankfully I already had it installed on the machine I was using but I had to close the last Android project I was working on and start a new one, which further chewed into my time. Could have been avoided had I been given better prep material. This was an Android question, which was unfortunate because I did almost all my prep on LeetCode style questions since I had no knowledge of what to expect. The interviewer just copy/pasted a function call (mimicking a 3rd party library) in the chat and told me to implement it. That's it. No further explanation or expectations. I was a little taken aback at first but eventually found the solution. I thought this was kind of an odd question and apparently the interviewer agreed because he said I'd never have to do something like this in real life. While I liked the guy, this type of question was a huge disappointment since it's not at all indicative of my abilities. The interviewer was friendly and collaborative so I liked that. The second technical part of the process was with a different engineer and I knew right away I would get denied from the position. This was a more senior engineer who I could immediately tell didn't want to be there. He rushed through his intro and then was obviously ignoring me during mine. We used coderpad for this one and he copy pasted a wall of code into the editor. He did a very vague, convoluted job of explaining the code and question and didn't actually write in comments anything he expected or what I was supposed to do. His microphone was not great and I had a hard time understanding him. Asking him to repeat himself made his tone more annoyed than it already was. When I asked clarifying questions about the problem, he seemed disinterested. He even said he wasn't entirely sure about my questions since he didn't write the prompt. I spent about 10-15 minutes just trying to figure out what the question was and the interviewer got more and more frustrated. I think aggressive and hostile are too strong of words but I definitely did not feel comfortable or welcome. Attempts at collaborating here were fruitless, he clearly had no interest in it and anytime I'd ask a question for clarification, he almost never even answered it. When it was my turn to ask questions at the end, he had this definite tone of rushing through and carelessness, like it didn't matter because I wasn't moving on. This second technical portion overall was probably the worst part of any interview I've had in my career. While I was initially excited about the opportunity, I feel I dodged a bullet. Arbitrary questions with no real purpose, inexperienced or disinterested interviewers, and lack of preparation materials made me feel like the company was actively working against my success rather than setting me up for it (which other companies do better). It felt like they didn't want me to work there and were trying to weed me out and it makes me uneasy about what working there is actually like. It's unfortunate because once I figured out what I was actually being asked, it was a fairly simple question. However at that point, I already felt very defeated and unwelcome and had a hard time focusing. On the upside, I had a friendly recruiter and a choice in the style of initial technical screen, which was appreciated.

Took roughly 2 months total. Recruiter was very fast to respond and the interviewers were all very nice and collaborative during the interview. Typical HR call, two technical rounds, and behavorial round.