Absurd!! I got the following email to move on to the "next step" in the process:
We start with a formal assessment stage consisting of a written interview and tests that you can take at your own pace, followed by three stages of interviews. In outline:
Initial resume screening (done)
Written interview, aptitude and personality tests (this stage)
Technical, strategy and management interviews
Executive interviews with the CTO and me
Final interviews for specific role
This written interview is a prepared statement for interviewers to read in advance of your meeting to cover your interests, priorities, experience and ambition. There is no rush, I will leave your application open a few weeks to let you find the time for this step. Please take the opportunity to highlight achievements which you feel demonstrate exceptional talent, leadership, and character, and answer these questions in a PDF document:
Education
How did you fare in high school mathematics, physical sciences and computing? Which were your strengths and which most enjoyable? How did you rank, competitively, in these subjects?
What sort of high school student were you? Outside of required work, what were your interests and hobbies? What would your high school peers remember you for, if we asked them?
In languages and the arts at high school, what were your strongest subjects and how did you rank in those among your school peers?
Please outline some high school achievements considered exceptional by peers and staff members.
Which degree and university did you choose, and why?
What did you enjoy most about your time at university?
Which university courses did you perform best at? How did you rank in your degree?
Outside of class, what were your interests and where did you spend your time?
What did you achieve at university that you consider exceptional?
Engineering leadership experience
What kinds of software projects have you worked on before? Which operating systems, development environments, languages, databases?
Would you describe yourself as a strong coder? Why?
Would you describe yourself as a strong architect? If so, why, and in which sorts of applications?
Would you describe yourself as a strong manager? Why?
What software products have you yourself led, which shipped to customers and which you believe set the pace for the global market? What was your role?
What is your most senior role in a software engineering organisation? Describe your span of control, and the diversity of products, functions and teams you were responsible for.
Outline your thoughts on open source software development. What is important to get right when you are working on open source projects? What open source projects have you worked on? Have you been an open source maintainer, and can you point to those projects?
How extensive is your experience of Python software engineering? How do you test Python applications? Outline the applications that you have led in Python, and your takeaways from that experience.
How extensive is your experience of Golang software engineering? Outline the applications that you have led in Golang.
How comprehensive would you say your knowledge of networking is? How have you gained this knowledge?
How have you used relational data, such as SQL databases, in your work? How much data model design work have you done? How do you approach this work? What has been unexpected for you in working with structured data models and design?
Which NoSQL or unstructured data stores have you used? Are there any you would not use again, and why? How do you reason about choosing the right data store for a project?
Are you familiar with big data and data lake technologies? Which ones are interesting and would you use again?
Describe your experience building large systems with many services - web front ends, REST APIs, data stores, event processing and other kinds of integration between components. What are the key considerations for architecture, maintainability, and reliability in these large systems?
How comprehensive would you say your knowledge of a Linux distribution is, from the kernel up? How familiar are you with low-level system architecture, runtimes and Linux distro packaging? How have you gained this knowledge?
Describe any experience you have with low-level embedded systems engineering, on Linux or other embedded operating systems and code bases.
Outline your thoughts on documentation in large software projects. What practices should software developers follow in this regard? What are examples of the best open source documentation you have worked with?
Outline your thoughts on quality in software development. What practices are most effective in software teams to drive improvements in quality?
Outline your thoughts on observability, telemetry and debugging in cloud environments. Which tools are great examples in
