TLDR: the interview process is tough, it's supposed to be fair but I could argue it really is not, and I detected hints of elitism in the company culture but did not get enough exposure to confirm or deny its presence
The process was a TripleByte quiz -> Zoom call with recruiter -> Zoom call with team lead -> programming challenge.
They list this process in the job posting, which is quite nice. Also, the recruiter was completely open about what the salary/compensation for the role was at each level.
The interview itself? Much less nice. The first issue is that the programming challenge is a take-home assignment that you have 2 weeks to complete. You join a Slack channel with the team you'll be working with so that you can communicate with them on there, and you submit pull requests to a GitHub repo so that they can review your code. The goal here is to make the interview process match the actual work experience as much as possible. This is arguably a good idea, but it's also a lot to ask of the candidate compared to most interviews.
The code review process could have been better. One recent review on here says "when reviewing PRs they will nitpick on small things" and "there's no collaboration here, it's my-way-or-the-highway." This describes my experience as well. Granted, a lot of their feedback was very good, but some of it really did seem like nitpicking.
As for the collaboration, there's an inherent power imbalance here, and I couldn't tell if they're aware of it. In a normal code review process, both sides can keep debating/arguing their point until someone changes their mind or just decides it's not worth the fight. But, in this code review process, one side gets to determine whether or not you get a job offer. More than once, I found myself thinking "I really we're splitting hairs at this point, but I'm afraid to push back too hard because I'm afraid it would reduce my chance of getting an offer."
One of the other recent interviews said that they "felt some arrogant attitude." I agree with this as well. Most of the reviewers were good, but one of them did seem to be more hostile than necessary, in my opinion. A note to senior engineers: proving to junior engineers that you're better than them really is not productive. In addition, getting my code reviewed did take longer than I would've liked. I'm trying not to fault them too much for this, since they (probably) had code from multiple candidates to review (on top of completing their normal tasks), but I will admit it was somewhat annoying.
The feedback that I was given said that my code improved significantly with review. I was applying for a junior position, so I was hoping that that would be good enough. My belief is that companies should help people in junior positions grow to their maximum potential. It seems that Teleport does not agree with this position, and instead thinks that everyone should immediately be able to write perfect code, regardless of seniority. I'm sure they would disagree with that statement if you asked them, but it's honestly the impression that I got.
