Etsy Software Engineer interview experience

The task was basically “fix what’s broken” in an existing Node.js/Express-style web app, including using a test runner like chai, and it was time-boxed—an hour in the prompt I saw. I liked that it was tied to what engineers actually do day to day instead of trick algorithms, but I also felt the clock working against anyone unfamiliar with the specific IDE and runtime details.

The challenge was built so that success depended on getting the small things right while reading someone else’s code. I managed to pass the visible checks, but I couldn’t shake the sense that the time limit and tooling