Hi, I hope you are doing well, it was my pleasure to interview for smallcase, definitely one of the places that I want to work for.
Some feedback,
The first round of interviews was really good and I actually learned a lot of things as well it was a healthy discussion.
In the second round, I don't think I was treated fairly enough. The time given to me was quite less, and most of the time was spent in understanding the requirements, what he actually wanted to know, based on this feeling, I admit that I had not managed the time, and if this was the reason for my rejection, I would happily agree to that.
I asked for a little extra time, he said he was not available, so I asked whether I could complete it as a take-home assignment, he agreed to that, I got a timeline for next week.
As I have previously said I really wanted to work for you guys because I use the product and I am deeply interested in the industry as well, I completed the assignment on the same night, I pulled out an all-nighter, I started coding at 4 am and I finished around 8 am. I mailed the recruiter on the same day, as I knew that I had done a good job with the assignment and completed it well within time (allotted time was 7 days), I completed it in mere hours.
I asked the recruiter daily about the status of my application and he was polite enough to answer me daily, without any problems, but the detailed feedback was really heartbreaking.
I was not practically asking for hints, I guess he lacked the way he explained himself about the question in the interview, or maybe I didn't understand. He was never really clear about his intentions. How he wants the component to be called, which confused me to a greater extent, he kept on saying make the component as you are using the component in some library, but he really wanted me to do was not how you use the component in some library, so why was he saying that in the first place, later I understood how he wants me to do it, and this should be the first thing that he should have said technically. My fault in this is that I also should have asked it beforehand but I was kind of nervous, as smallcase is one of my dream companies to work for and I agree this can be a factor to reject me, but not definitely what he wrote.
Also, it really breaks my heart when he said that the assignment -- submitted doesn't show his own research and development efforts. I literally put in a good show out there and it was 100% my effort. The meat logic that he said in the interview by the way which he himself admitted was hard, I was able to do that without even taking any help from the internet because I had faced the same problem beforehand in my old projects (I can also show the commits as a proof, that I had solved a similar problem before with proper timestamps which dates back to 2-3 months). I was really annoyed after I gave up one night's sleep, completed the assignment on the same day by 100% my own efforts, and still, he just writes -- it is not my own research and development efforts.
I would still always want to work on the product because I absolutely love the product and would still apply for smallcase in the future, but this interview was really heartbreaking.
Everything other than that was good. i.e the first interviewer and the recruiter were very polite, and also knowledgeable, the second interviewer also told me one of the things that I didn't know, so he was also definitely knowledgeable, but the behavior was not good. The question was interesting though, what he asked me to solve.
