I interviewed through a Toronto-focused opening that started with a short HR screen on Zoom, then moved into a hiring manager call. The manager asked about my previous projects and specifically how I’d collaborated with other teams. That teamwork thread continued as the process progressed.
For a third round, I reviewed a junior developer’s pull request and had to respond in a kind, empathetic way. The tone they wanted came through clearly in how they framed the feedback. The final round was the longest: a 4-and-a-half-hour day with four different people, broken into multiple sessions.
> 1 year
Easy Negative Pune
My experience was dominated by a sense of disregard, especially from HR after I completed the work. In one timeline, I was given a take-home or coding-style task focused on SQL using a limited Slack.db PostgreSQL dataset. The questions were fairly straightforward—write a query and then run it in a programmatic way—and I felt like I was doing what was expected. Still, even if I performed well, HR went silent afterward and the follow-up sounded like a generic “we’re not proceeding” without any meaningful feedback.
Another part of what I went through left me equally frustrated: I received an email asking for portfolio links and additional information, I replied quickly and followed up a few days later, and then nothing. I remember expecting at least a courtesy update that they’d decided to move on, but the lack of response felt unprofessional.
> 1 year
Negative United States
After a referral, it took nearly a month for the process to actually begin, and once it did the rhythm was clear: a recruiter call for overall fit, th…
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