Definitely an experience that I wouldn't recommend. Huge lack of professionality. I've applied to their job post, and then been invited to do a 2-hour test. A bunch of tests for PHP, React, and CSS skills. It's possible to complete them in less than 2 hours. If I remember correctly, it took me 1 hour and 15 minutes. So far so good, more or less. Because several other companies will try to waste way more of your time before letting you talk with a (usually not really aware of anything) human. Things got ugly with the call with HR. In my little experience with HR I can say that the most invasive questions were asked by this company. We started with a little bit of background questions, the usual (all fine here). Then the HR started to talk about the company and I've started to feel a lot of fakeness about the whole thing. He talked about benefits like they were the holy grail, when really the position offered some basic, and I would say mostly useless benefits. Nothing that a decent salary for a senior web developer wouldn't cover by default. They listed their CLIENTS in their benefits, and I think that's all there's to say about that. But it got worse, because I suspect he noticed that I was quite skeptical, and at that point the guy went into full car salesman mode. And the more he sold, the more that car looked ugly. Multiple times during the interview he went on and on about how this is the biggest WordPress agency in Europe. I can't see a single reason why that would be important in a job interview. You can check out their past work on their website, nothing out of the ordinary. Just the usual large catalog of generic websites, most of them forgettable. I don't think I exaggerate if I say that this guy repeated that they were the bigger in Europe for 4 times in a timeframe of an hour. The conversation was already awkward, as you can imagine. I think in that conversation I spoke like 20% of the time. Everything else was him trying to sell the company. Then, some really invasive questions about what I do in my free time, outside my regular job. And he's blathering how this job should be the main focus rather than my side projects... boy, you don't say? I really needed to remark that my full time job would've been my main focus. At this stage I concluded that I wasn't talking to someone particularly bright. I've done my fair share of interviews, and I think this is the only time when someone was this patronizing while at the same time really misunderstood the entire dynamic of the interview. (you know what one of the other job "benefits" was? I copy/paste it here: "Openness to entrepreneurial thinking and acting") Then, finally, after the sales cycle ended, I had the chance to ask a couple of questions. I really wanted to know two things: what I would do there (the job description was too generic) and if they would match the salary expectations. First of all, as soon as I mentioned the word "salary" and we spoke about prices, the interviewer had a little bit of a panic attack. It was quite clear that he was uncomfortable, go figure why. The guy, was, with not too much surprise, completely incapable of answering two very, very basic questions. The answer to my salary range request was laughable: "yeah... mnmmm... maybe the salary is within our range, but we need to see what value you can bring." So he gave literally the worst answer you can receive in this context. They didn't even share a range, really muddy behavior, and again, it was clear that on their side there was a fear of talking about money. He also proposed to me to do a task (for free, of course) to showcase this "value" that I should prove I could bring. And this is where I quit the process. Also, in the actual job they require daily standups and to track your time. For me this isn't a problem but I thought you should know. Keep also in mind that the salary I've asked is in the lower range of any decent web company in a 1st world country. Also, they hire on a contractor basis, so you aren't even a real employee, which means no severance pay at all in case you're let go. So to summarize: * Substandard low salaries * Have a huge list of developers, but website quality don't match this huge list of devs * Generic job description, one-size-fits-all. What I got from these details is that this company is probably a sweatshop that prints out your typical low to average WordPress websites, nothing special. If you don't believe me just go on their website and see the websites in their portfolio. TLDR: useless benefits (that could be covered with a regular developer salary), recruiter was probably a car salesman that thinks he's working at Google, not in a company just like many others. And huge lack of transparency on the salary. But hey, they say they're the biggest in Europe
