A coding challenge, followed by 90 minutes pair programming, 60 minute backend and 60 minute frontend interviews. I enjoyed meeting the engineers - they seemed like people that it could be good to work with. One of the first steps in the process - before the technical interviews - was to provide references. It felt off to be asking my colleagues for references at this stage. My instinct was to decline (you can't bother people for references every time you apply for a job), but the HR person assured me that it would be a simple questionnaire. I was honestly embarrassed when my former manager and colleagues told me about the reference requests they received. My boss said that it was the most intense referral that he’s ever had to do - “the equivalent of writing a mini performance review.” My colleagues said that the reference software was “kind of creepy.” It forced itself into full-screen mode and warned them that it was logging their mouse movements when they tried to leave the app to double-check some dates on LinkedIn. The icing on the cake - after a week I received a bubbly exclamation-point-ridden email from HR to set up a call for "an update from the team!" Sounds like an offer, right? Turned out it was an absolutely diabolical way to give a rejection - roughly equivalent to inviting someone on vacation to break up with them. There was no feedback, other than they thought I “have potential.” Felt a bit patronizing, as I have been a software engineer for more than 20 years.

Recruiter screening, take home coding project, 3x 1 hour interviews (hiring manager, developers). They asked me nothing about my coding project, and instead focused on tech trivia type questions. Barely focused on my problem solving skills or how I go about breaking down problems or any questions of that sort. It was mainly around definitions to terms and other things you could easily lookup in documentation so you don't normally keep it at the forefront of your mind. Just spend time looking up object oriented terms and definitions and give rails docs a once over and you'd probably be fine.