The interview process with Slack was one of the most empathetic I've had the privilege of experiencing. 😊 With most interviews I've gone through, the company didn't seem to care about me as a person and merely focused on how fast or efficiently I could whiteboard out a data structure/algorithm question taken out of "Cracking the Coding Interview." Here, I believe the team genuinely wanted to make sure I was not only a great engineer but also a good fit for Slack's culture and development process. This was like a fresh breath of air that I had not experienced before with technical interviews given that the recruiter, hiring manager, and employees interviewing me were all extremely supportive and on-point. More insight can be found on their own blog. - March 5th - I applied online - March 9th - recruiter reached out - March 15th - initial recruiter call - March 19th to 25th - 1 week for a take-home project - March 29th - positive feedback, time to schedule a call with the hiring manager - April 5th - call with the hiring manager and on-site approved - April 13th - prep call for an interview with recruiter - April 17th - interview on-site - April 18th - offer extended

(1) A 30min phone conversation with one of their recruiters. We had a brief phone conversation about the company and my background, why I might be interested, what I'm looking for next in my career, and the general boring questions that everyone is sick off. The recruiter however sounded like a nice person. (2) Home exercise (completed in a week and sent it to them). Nothing to add here. They sent me the requirements and a week to complete it. (3) Phone conversation with a Director asking general psychological and HR questions. This Director sounded like a really great guy and I felt very comfortable being myself and honest with him. However, over the phone this person made sure to point out that only a tiny percentage of candidates make it through their interviews, which sounded very elitist in my opinion and very out of touch. Anyway, he sounded like a nice guy I thought... so let's move on. (4) Onsite with about 5 rounds of interviews (about 3.5hrs). Throughout the previous steps I was told that the technical questions would be related to the code I submitted with the exercise. However, only about 30% of the questions were about my code, the rest were questions about how I might build an imaginary app, which they drew on a whiteboard with some lines and boxes. I had to constantly pull teeth out in order to figure out what they were asking me. Although their technical interview involves a take-home exercise, the rest is a pretty dry and uninspiring process that involves imaginary web apps and trick questions. No whiteboard coding though, only drawing lines and talking. Although the technical interviews weren't what I expected, in general the Developers seemed like ok people and understanding for the most part. Up until this point I still cared about the opportunity, but I stopped caring as soon as the Directors and Managers walked into the room. It's really hard to put it into words but I'll try to explain how I felt. I felt like the Directors and Managers I interviewed with were pretty delusional about their culture and who they were as people. I felt like they were putting up a fake show of "everyone here is kind, empathetic, sympathetic, amazing human being, smartest, blah, blah, blah...", while constantly contradicting themselves and asking me personal, non-empathetic questions about my career. I felt that if I worked there, I would always have to wear a fake smile in order to meet their "culture" requirements. Their culture talk seems like a BS filter of "if you don't think like me, act like me, or see the world like me, then you must not be any good". I wouldn't buy into such elitist and narrow-minded culture. It seemed like a very fake and unauthentic place to work, so even if they offered me the position (still waiting for a response), I would not take it.

Had a contact there who got me a phone screen scheduled with a recruiter on a Friday morning. The recruiter emailed me 3 minutes before we were supposed to speak saying he wasn't going to make it, but to email him any times I'm available for the next week and he'd be sure to make time. I sent him two times, one Monday morning and one Tuesday morning. Monday rolled past with no response, so Monday evening I emailed my contact there who nagged the recruiter and got them to confirm me for Tuesday (the email confirmation came in at around 9:30pm on Monday). On our call he was clearly reading from a list of questions, and not really willing to engage conversationally - seeming rather checked out from the conversation. In addition, it sounded like he was eating his lunch while we spoke, with what sounded like chewing noises throughout. I felt like most of the questions should have been for more of a Product Manager role as opposed to an Engineering role, as they were more about features they could add to Slack or new apps I liked and why. The entire experience with the recruiter, from initial contact until the end was very rude and unprofessional. I felt like I'd been written off as a candidate prior to even talking with him, which made me wonder why he was wasting both of our time.