I applied for the position in Chiasso, Switzerland. The process consisted of two rounds in my case before being rejected.
The first round was with the recruiter and included the usual background and motivation questions. The second round was a technical interview with several engineers and the hiring manager, involving pair programming to evaluate how you approach and solve problems.
During the technical round, I was given intentionally poorly written code and asked to implement additional features only after having refactored the part that you need to touch for developing the feature. The refactoring expectations seemed to align with SOLID principles and Domain-Driven Design concepts, although except for solid principles that are kinda obvious for a refactoring, the rest was not explicitly stated during the interview in any interview phase. Furthermore, you're expected to apply test driven development in any phase of the coding interview including understanding the code (they ask you to look at the test for understanding how the code works).
I personally found it challenging to fully concentrate on understanding a badly written code while simultaneously discussing my reasoning out loud with multiple interviewers that are trying to interrupt you and they don't allow you to focus on the problem and of course I can understand that, on their end, they may want to help you while unfortunately achieving the opposite unwanted effect. I performed very poorly so I even agree with the final decision, and I take responsibility for the bad performance. However, I felt that the interview dynamic made it harder to focus and demonstrate my abilities. I really hope that the process can be improved for ensure the best experience to every future candidate and the best skills assessment possible for the company as well.
My suggestion for future candidates is to be very comfortable with refactoring legacy code and developing new features while applying clean architecture principles, domain driven design and solid principles, and reasoning aloud while solving problems under pressure. Good luck to everyone :)
