I couldn’t have asked for a better interview process at Duo. I’ll start by saying that my situation was a little unique; I was working at a San Francisco based company looking to move back to Michigan, where I’m from. As you might imagine, this poses some logistical problems. Duo was very accommodating during every step of the process, from working with me around the time difference all the way up to booking me a hotel room and flight that worked with my very, very tight time schedule (it turns out it’s hard to fly across the country on the sly). The recruiter I was working with was amazingly helpful and transparent; I never wondered where I was in the process, which, as someone who has interviewed with quite a few tech companies, was a very welcome change. As for the actual interview process, it pretty much followed the standard tech company format. I had three phone screens, none of which were terribly technical. I had phone screens with two engineering managers and the director of engineering, and it seemed the purpose of these screens was to determine a fit both ways. We talked about my experiences at my current company and the projects I would be working on at Duo. Overall, the phone screens were pleasant, and gave me a good idea of what Duo was all about. Next came the onsite interviews. As I mentioned earlier, this involved setting up a flight that would allow me to only miss one day of work here in California, a task that Duo executed admirably. I couldn’t have asked for a better in-the-door experience. The front desk greeted me warmly and saw to it that all of my needs were attended to right away. After that, the day began with a 45 minute chat with Dug Song, the CEO and co-founder of Duo. It was a good way to ease me into the grueling interview gauntlet that followed. Following Dug, I had two technical interviews with the two engineering managers I had spoken to on the phone, and one less technical interview with the director of engineering, all before lunch. Each interview was 45 minutes long. The interviews with the two engineering managers were fairly standard; we started off by chatting about my experiences, about the things their teams were working on, and then launched into the whiteboard section. The whiteboard questions were pretty comparable to interview questions I’ve had in the past. My interview with the director of engineering was unlike any other interview I’ve ever had, in a good way. We started out with the usual chit-chat about my experiences and the like. After a few minutes of that, however, we quickly shifted gears into talking about the greater engineering challenges that Duo faced as an organization. My interviewer was very keen on hearing my take on the issues that the whole of Duo engineering dealt with, and he took notes and asked insightful questions about my answers. I got the sense that he was taking my suggestions seriously, which was pretty cool, coming from the director of engineering. In fact, we ended up continuing the interview at the end of the day in an Ann Arbor coffee shop. With the technical interviews out of the way, it was time for lunch. I will say that I don’t think it is Duo’s normal policy to cram all of the interviews before lunch, but as I had a flight to catch, it was the only way it would work -- another example of Duo accommodating my (admittedly somewhat unreasonable) constraints. I took lunch with two rank-and-file Duo engineers at Grizzly Peak, a very tasty restaurant within walking distance of Duo’s office. The two engineers were very friendly and personable, and we had a good time at lunch. It was very nice to take some time to unwind a little bit and learn more about what the day-to-day of working at Duo was like. The final stop of the interview train was with the recruiter I had been working with from the beginning. There, we went over HR-ey stuff like benefit packages and so on. Afterwards, we took a tour of the office and met a few more friendly Duo employees. As I said earlier, this recruiter had been a joy to work with, and I left Duo with a very positive impression of the place and the people who work there. We wrapped up the day with the coffee shop interview with the director of engineering I mentioned earlier, and then I was promptly whisked to the airport to catch my flight and my breath.