1. Phone interview with HR. The interview was somewhat technical, but the interviewer was very nice and a very understanding person.
2. A day or so later, he requested that I take a little test on lytmus.io. It took about 4 hours. It was time consuming to me, but it wasn't crazy hard by any means. To me, this is a good way to do things because it allows companies to actually see that you can write code and debug.
3. The following day, he contacted me again, saying I did well on the lytmus test and asked if I could come into the office and meet with some of their devs. We scheduled that for the following week, and I met with 3 people. They were all great. It wasn't a horribly technical interview, it was more like "tell me about your last job and what technologies you used". Much more like a conversation than anything else. It was almost enjoyable because the 3 people I was talking to were so nice and interesting!
I actually got the job offer, but declined it. For me, this company wasn't a great fit. First, during my initial phone interview, the interviewer asked if I ever had to deal with high priority issues over the weekend and how I felt about that. At my last job, I never got called in on the weekends, so this type of question made me a little nervous. I also asked what type of hours they worked and was told typically 9-5. My last job was very flexible with hours (I liked to work 6:30-3:30), so to have to work very specific hours was a turn off for me. Also, they're very proud of their office and the open floor plan, but personally, I would seriously dread working in a place that doesn't have cubes. I would have a very difficult time concentrating if I could see and hear people constantly. It would make me less productive, and that would be frustrating.
The last, and most major, issue for me is that I had read all of the reviews on here and there was a constant theme of "mandatory overtime". I asked the HR person about it, and he first said that he was aware of those reviews and that they came mostly from hourly employees. Then he said that their "key engineers" also had to work a lot of overtime. (what motivation is there for me to be a key engineer if I would be forced to work overtime?). Then, he said it's normal in tech to work 50+ hour work weeks and that in his 20 years of experience can't remember a time only working a 40 hour work week. This just wasn't for me. My last job was a 40hr/week type of job and the new job that I accepted is a 40hr/week type of job. I don't think it's the norm to have to work 50+ hour work weeks. I'm a strong believer of work / life balance.
