The entire interview process was over Slack. It was a low-key interview with a few technical questions and some more probing questions that seemed to focus on culture fit. Overall I felt the technical questions were pretty solid, but not too tough to answer.
After the technical / culture interview, I was invited to work on their take home. This is where it started to go awry. As a lot of other people have mentioned, the technical coding take home is a broken WordPress plugin that someone with solid Wordpress / PHP experience should be able to fix. However, here are the key technical points in the job listing right here on GlassDoor.:
A rock-solid understanding of the core JavaScript language, HTML5, and CSS3. Experience working on accessibility is a plus.
Familiarity with a server-side language like PHP, Ruby, or Python.
Proficiency developing well-structured web applications using modern JavaScript tools like React and Redux.
The technical covers none of these points and is all PHP based. If you are familiar with Ruby or Python, this won't help you at all when it's time to slog through PHP.
I feel my resume is pretty solid for the points mentioned. However NOWHERE on my resume do I list PHP or WP plugin development as a skill. While I did get the plugin working, the follow up questions were all related to PHP, server load balancing(???), and plugin design.
So, for a JS Engineer position there was 1 question about vanilla JS. 0 for HTML, CSS, or React/Redux/ front-end framework of choice. That seems odd given the job description! From the job description, I'd guess they're looking for some sharp JS folks who know a JS framework. The interview is really, really geared to *not* getting that.
