The initial chats with the recruiter and manager-to-be were good but after the technical interview I withdrew my application. The only remaining step would have been an interview with the CTO.
The technical interview felt more like a quick fire pop quiz around obscure Java concepts no one ever really uses and that are irrelevant to the job. Many of the questions were asked without any context, which made them impossible to answer. I’ve asked for clarification lots of times and went back to examples from my past lots of times to make up for this. Although this was only supposed to be a technical interview, these were then followed by behavioural questions, many of them hinting that there’s a big disconnect between the tech team and management. There was no good structure to this interview and I feel like they learned almost nothing about me or my skills and I learned almost nothing about the team and the role. It also seemed that the company’s culture is lacking as the questions I had about culture were answered with details about project work and the highlight was “we can work from home”. I didn’t feel any excitement whatsoever about the company or work done from any interviewers.
The role itself seemed to suggest they were looking for someone to take over the work of an entire team of contractors while also working on POCs so it seemed like long solitary hours were expected.
Overall it seemed to me like the company's culture was really not great so if you're looking to interview with them, make sure to dig deep into it.