I went directly to speaking with someone in a senior position as a product manager. Reasonably pleasant person who spoke well, but I hope they read this feedback because I thought their interview style highlighted the problem with the communication and engineering at flatiron. We ran through a few hypothetical tech scenarios with their products. I explained various considerations, from an engineering perspective, on what the possible issues could be — tech stack/system design, Data Structures employed, optimization of algorithms, etc. Based on varying factors, we could make an educated estimate on improving the speed and reliability they were asking for in the scenarios. The interviewer was outright dismissive of how tech trade offs are measured to optimize, and for that matter, likely masking that they didn’t know what I was talking about. It felt like they wanted me to find a way to reach an arbitrary number of improvement for a purely business agenda, rather than play spokesperson for engineering like they made out that the role requested. Plainly put, that is a red flag for the product team, because it shows the disconnect between product and engineering that is so common in the tech industry. Most, if not all, of the current PMs at Flatiron have no engineering background for what it’s worth. If the hiring managers at flatiron want engineering/tech experienced PMs, focus on listening to how they’re thinking about problems as an engineer. It’s fundamentally flawed to think about the candidate purely as a non tech PM. Good thing I got rejected because I don’t think this was a good fit for either of us.

Two phone screens with very enthusiastic employees. They each had a different sense of what the job would be, and I ended the interview process somewhat confused about what they were looking for. Everything was very standard in terms of questions otherwise.