I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Chess.com (Top of the World, UT) in May 2021
Interview
First interview with the head of the frontend part, great attitude, all seemed great. Then a questionnaire focused on Symfony even though I had already mentioned I didn't have much experience on Symfony... Not so good. Then the technical interview... and that's where things got really ugly. One of the interviewers started by telling me that I had 1 out of 5 in the questionnaire (no hi, no how you doing, that was the first thing), with an attitude like "what the hell are we doing here". From then on, he made all the efforts he could to be condescending at times, or plain rude. He kept asking Symfony questions (after we discussed it wasn't my strong suit) and the rest of the questions can be summarized as "all the ways we need to break clean code guidelines to support huge traffic". Apparently, the right answer was screw the good practices, whatever works.
Anyway, I would definitely not recommend them.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What do you do if you have two records in different tables and you need to join them?
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Chess.com
Interview
1. HR Interview
All good, straight forward and pleasant.
2. Task and questionnaire
The questionnaire was about various topics and logic questions.
The task consisted of drawing a system architecture flow, a diagram for the same project, and its API endpoint messages structure.
3. Technical Interview
It was sort of a tech and cultural fit interview in the form of small talk.
It was dull and I got no insights about the interviewer, open position, technology stack, workflow, team, or company itself.
Reaching the end of the call, the interviewer told me twice that I performed well and my application would progress to the next stage. That surprising and misleading statement was made to determine my genuine interest in the position.
4. Follow-up email on the previous step
A rejection email.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Chess.com (Berlin) in Aug 2023
Interview
It was a good interview, but the compensation is pretty low if you are outside of the US. This was the main concern. There are three interviews 1. Recruiter 2. Interview with engineer or team lead(no coding challenges) 3. CTO interview
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Chess.com (Abuja, Federal Capital Territory) in Oct 2022
Interview
Interesting and engaging interview all around. Interview stages were handled by team members that were clearly enthusiastic about their work. The whole process was very transparent, I knew what each stage was going to entail, and they also told me exactly what to expect when I start the job. Super-energetic bunch too!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you work on re-platforming existing legacy code?
