Overall, my interview experience was below my expectations.
The biggest issue was the interview scheduling. My interview was originally confirmed for 6:00 PM local time, but less than 24 hours before the interview I was asked to reschedule due to interviewer availability. The earliest alternative offered was 10:00 PM local time on the US East Coast. As a result, the coding portion did not begin until around 10:30 PM, which is far from an ideal time for a high-concentration technical interview.
The interview started with a project deep dive, followed by a live coding session. The interviewer was professional and focused on the technical discussion. However, the coding session felt extremely rushed. Within approximately 25 minutes, candidates were expected to understand 2 problems, ask clarifying questions, explain their approach, and implement working solutions. There was no opportunity to run the code or thoroughly verify edge cases.
While I understand that every company has its own interview style, the process felt more like a race against the clock than an evaluation of engineering ability. The combination of the last-minute schedule change, the late-night interview time, and the limited coding time made it difficult to perform at my best.
The scheduling experience also raised concerns about the team’s working culture. Since the interview had to be moved to a 10:00 PM local start time due to interviewer availability, it made me wonder how often engineers based in North America are expected to accommodate late-night meetings with teams in other time zones. While I cannot speak to the actual day-to-day work, the interview process itself left me concerned about work-life balance and cross-time-zone collaboration.