Negative experience primarily due to the hiring process. Candidates are required to invest significant time completing an exercise before any initial conversation, yet the level of review effort did not appear proportional. This created a sense of imbalance in time investment. The process began directly with a take-home assignment (a TDD review in this case), without an introductory or alignment discussion. After submission, a follow-up interview was scheduled. A few observations that may help future candidates: First, it became evident during the interview that the written submission had not been fully reviewed. This undermines the purpose of a detailed exercise and suggests that candidates should expect to present their work live regardless of the effort put into the written review. Second, expectations for the assignment were not clearly aligned. Candidates may approach the task from an engineering management perspective—focusing on evaluating reasoning, providing structured feedback, and suggesting improvements without prescribing a single solution. However, the interview emphasized arriving at a specific solution, shifting the discussion away from review quality and toward real-time problem solving. The rejection feedback was generic but quick, with no clear indication of which areas did not meet expectations. During the interview, there were signs of misalignment in expectations and approach, which made the outcome less surprising. As the discussion progressed, the conversation became increasingly focused on a specific solution path, highlighting a lack of alignment on how the exercise was being evaluated. This resulted in reduced engagement toward the later part of the discussion, as it no longer reflected the initially understood scope of the role. Overall, candidates may benefit from: - Clarifying how the assignment will be evaluated (solution-focused vs. review-focused). - Preparing to present a concrete solution, even if the prompt appears open-ended.

I participated in an interview process for an Engineering Manager role. They immediately sent a fairly extensive take-home 17-page document with an architectural and management assessment, mimicking an engineering manager reviewing a design produced by a team member. The exercise required producing a detailed analysis and recommendations in a shared Google Docs document. I invested significant personal time into the assignment and produced several pages of original content without using AI-generated assistance. After submission, I received a generic rejection message without personalized feedback regarding the assessment or areas where my profile did not align with the role. Given the seniority and technical depth expected for the position, I was hoping for at least minimal feedback after the amount of work requested during the process. From my perspective, the expectations for the role were set extremely high for outstanding candidates, especially because my background exceeded all listed requirements, including long-term engineering leadership and solutions architecture experience. The experience left me with the impression that the evaluation process may rely heavily on standardized filtering rather than detailed candidate assessment. Candidates considering this process should be prepared for a time-intensive assignment phase without guarantees of feedback after submitting answers.

I sent in an application for the role already knowing that their interview process started with an async exercise. What I was not expecting was to immediately be sent a *seventeen page* technical design document and be expected to fully parse, review, critique, and provide feedback on it. That is a bananapants expectation from them, there is no way I'm investing that much time and energy on something without having had a single word of human conversation first. I have no idea if I'd be a cultural fit, I have no idea what the salary and benefits are, zero indication of what the role actually entails, and you want me to spend hours on unpaid labor? Forget that noise. If they want to wholly outsource initial filtering to candidates, in a way that is expensive, but not for them, they're more than welcome to do so, just not with me.