A recruiter reached out to me, and told me that Wayfair is expanding in Toronto. He told me the package is very good compares to what I have currently, and I am interested. Even I had an offer at hand at the moment, the recruiter said please hold off, and we will make the interview process ASAP, which it still happens after 2 weeks. He said you can hold the offer for more than 2 weeks, which sounds fishy.
I was like, okay, I will hold off my current offer as long as I can.
The tech screening is done via a company called Karat, which will ask you 5 quick design questions, and 1 coding question.
After that, it's an virtual on site interview. 4 rounds. 1 hour each.
1. System design
2. System design
3. Behavior questions.
4. Live coding
The four interviewers are nice and mostly professional, and I have no ill feelings towards anyone of them.
I thought I did a good job overall, and rejected my current offer, which to recollect now is a stupid move, but I got HR replied to me saying that I didn't pass which surprises me a bit, as I finished all the questions.
The reason's being:
1. I am the first few interviewed in Toronto, and they are not sure how good overall the candidates are.
2. I am not able to start the work on my own.
I doubt those are real reasons of their rejection, and those are not valid to me. If you are interviewing multiple candidates and not sure about the result, just interview a few more and do your comparison, people can wait. If you are having a new office in Toronto, you apparently need someone from the US to knowledge share, or bootstrap the project. Also, from what I heard from the manager, this new team in Toronto is an expansion of an existing team, not something entirely new. And I didn't hear any of the interviewers mentioning the role requires me to lead the project alone. I hope I got an honest answer on which part I didn't do well, and show some honesty. I would perfect myself, and apply in the future if they do so, and I will recommand the company even I failed. But with those rejection reasons, I will definitely think twice about their decision making. One last thing, for the phone call which they reject me, I could barely hear what the recruiter told me. For those who interview for the Toronto office, beware.