One of the team leads contacted me over Hired. It was, to date, the most impressive pitch for a job I've experienced--especially given that I had little interest in it at first. He gave me a great impression of the culture, and a lot of motivation to give it a shot.
The coding assignment was longer than the usual 2-4 hour CRUD app, and involved tasks that were very new to me. Nevertheless, it was enjoyable, and certainly worth it to become familiar with the product and to get a sense of the types of challenges you might face in the role.
The assignment review was conducted with two other Solutions Engineers, both of whom were as charming and intelligent as the first. They dove into some of the issues with the project and were sure to balance it with words of encouragement when they noticed I was a bit intimidated. It helped build trust, and I was able to learn more about them after the technical portion.
I noticed from reading other Glassdoor interviews that, under normal circumstances, the next step would either be a call with the VP of Product or an on-site interview. In my case, I was asked to do an additional technical screening, which made me start to doubt whether I was a good fit. Additionally, when I looked up the person meant to interview me, I discovered a pull request on the main project's GitHub repo that implied I had taken too long on the assignment. I also noticed he had deleted someone's responses, which made me start to worry about the culture.
The additional screening turned out to be very easy--just to check if I could rapidly create a basic page and manipulate the DOM with JavaScript. If you're comfortable with positioning elements with CSS and have a good grasp of jQuery or Vue, this will be cake. The interviewer also turned out to be very friendly and encouraging, so I had simply gotten worked up over nothing.
I made it to the on-site round. At this point, I realized that the role had become a "dream job", and as a result, the nerves started to really kick in. Their office in SF is nice, and the HR person who greeted me there was wonderful. I had a call with the other team lead in France, followed by a series of three interviews with sales managers and engineers. There was yet another technical screen, this time sorting a JSON file. I concluded the on-site with a brief presentation, followed by a Q&A. Try to anticipate questions such as what you would've improved and how you accomplished each part, since in both cases I made mistakes with my responses.
The on-site interview resulted in me being disqualified due to a lack of experience. It was definitely dissappointing to hear, but based on the quality of the people I met, I'm confident they made a decision that would've prevented a bad situation for both of us. I also feel like they took my strengths into consideration and that it wasn't a flippant dismissal.
If you're reading this with the intention of applying or in the middle of the process, I understand that my words may discourage you. Please do not let them. If you want to work on an great product with honest, genuine people, you owe it to yourself to give it a shot. Just be prepared and be forthcoming.