Same as most reviews. Friendly team, lackluster HR. Be ready for a LONG process. For me it was 2 months and there was one more round, 30 min phone call with the CEO (i was told its a formality) that I did not make, this plus negotiation would have likely taken another month.
Round 1-30 min screen call with one of the team members. Basics, DNS types, TCP/UDP protocols, CDNs, etc. They are big on "speed of light" so watch out for a trick question about latency that is impossible.
Round 2-2-3 weeks later. I was looking at other jobs so I didn't mind the slow pace. Onsite 3 30 min interviews with team members. Everyone was on time and professional, friendly, intelligent, all 3 left a good impression and got me more interested in the job. Questions were slightly more in-depth, still about CDN, Networking, competition, a little bit about business value and certain situations like escalation, prioritizing features, etc. They did ask questions about their features, high level, its good to do some research. I feltI did great but still no insight about their hiring process, recruiter MIA.
Round 3-HW assignment 1 week to complete. They assume you already have a domain and website. Register your site with CF, change some security settings (https only), use their certs, setup one of their services on the site. The service requires onprem installation. Check the website headers and print (or compare) via script. Its not too bad, covers a broad range of skills needed for the job. It was actually one of my favorite HWs that I did during my job search. You can use a vm in EC2 AWS for free and find plenty of free domains if you dont have one.
Round 4-2+ weeks later. 7 30 min interviews onsite. I received a schedule with a 30 min gap in it. There was also a "lunch" hour. I followed up asking if I'm free for that 30 min and if I should make my own lunch plans? I only got a response an hour before the interview that the 30 min gap is actually another interview with someone who wasn't on the list. No response about lunch. There were 2 names out of the original 7 that were changed. Honestly, not a big deal, I get people are busy. The lunch was indeed a team lunch where I met 3 more team members so total 10 for the day.
Interviews were with Sales, CSM, Support and more team members. Similar questions as before, less detailed, more situational. Sales guy wants to know about value, support guy wants to know about troubleshooting, etc. Fun, friendly and positive interactions with everyone. I figured there is yet another round to speak with management as everyone on the list was fairly low level. Highest title was a lead whcih i guess means manager but I'm still not clear who was actually the hiring manager. I felt good about how I did. They were even chatting with each other during the process using IM and one of them let it slip that everyone likes me. I was feeling very confident.
Last person I met with was the recruiter, finally,4 rounds and countless hours someone will tell me about their hiring process. Everyone I asked up to this point had different answers. Turns out this is the final round, 30 min CEO call is a formality. Salary expectations. Turns out the comp plan has a 70/30 split which in my opinion is quite unusual for the role. Maybes typical for a Sales Engineer. I've been looking at Sales Eng positions too so I think I have a decent gauge on the market. While in some places Solutions and Sales Engineer is the same thing, not so at CloudFlare, this was absolutely not a pre-sales role. It does have quite a bit of pre-sales activity to it, but its as much post-sales as anything else. Not the most strategic role so I really can't think of a reason to warrant a 30% ote given the responsibilities. It was not clear if there are any accelerators. I walked out with a feeling they may ask me to take a cut on my current base which I was not ready for. I still expected the CEO round and offer.
No news till 8 days later, on Saturday, generic email, no-reply address with a rejection from "CloudFlare team". Not even signed by a person. Naturally I followed up with the recruiter and the first person who interviewed me (since I still wasnt told who is the actual decision maker). No response from them. I had great interactions with some of the team members throughout the process so I reached out to them. They said they did not even know the decision was made. And thats how it ended.
The long process gave me an opportunity to see their work environment and culture so I can know for sure if its a good fit for me. That was great, but if you expect candidates to invest this much time you could at least provide some personal feedback for those that make it this far. I like the tech and the people, but the lack of HR structure, similar reviews about unclear career development and raise processes, an usual comp structure, I probably dodged a bullet. Naturally I had other options and I'm happy with the end result.
