This was honestly the best interview experience I've ever had at a tech company (and I've interviewed with dozens). I interviewed for their Senior Android Engineer position (although most of their engineers are generalists / full-stack). There were two initial phone screens: one with an Engineering Manager and one with a lead Product Designer. It was fairly casual -- they asked me about my background and my experience at my previous company. We also chatted a lot about the product and culture at Threads. Next step is a two-day working interview where you actually get PAID to work with them for two days! It's a model I've never encountered before, and I absolutely loved it. I got the opportunity to build a real feature, attend different meetings with their engineering / product / designer teams, and do a demo at the end. It was a real hands-on experience for me to understand how their product development process works, how their engineering teams work, how they collaborate, and what their culture is like. It was truly enlightening, and I felt like the interview was a two-way experience because I was also gauging what it would be like to work for them. I wish more tech companies followed this interview format!!! You get a much better signal from a candidate this way instead of using the usual data structures / algorithms questions. They also really care about the people they hire. For example, when I received the offer, I asked them if they could sponsor me and my partner to move to Canada. They went out of their way to accommodate my situation and booked a meeting with me, my partner, and their legal team to address our concerns. It was so touching, and I never had a company care so much about their candidates before. Even though I ended up accepting an offer at another company (on a VERY thin margin by the way, it was such a close call), I absolutely love Threads -- the people, the product, the engineering quality, the culture. I'm deliberately keeping in touch with the entire team so that I can revisit the company in the future. :)

The interview process here is a 30 minute introductory call, followed by two 45 minutes calls, and then a "working interview" where you work on a project with the team for 2-3 days. Don't expect to be asked anything technical during the calls. There will be no coding or system design sessions. I found I spent more time asking questions than they did, so be prepared for that. I was not at all on board with the "working interview". Taking that much time out of my schedule, to maybe get an offer if they liked working with me, is not acceptable to me. It doesn't seem like they care to find engineers with good fundamentals, it's more about does this person know the exact technologies we use, and can they complete a task. I've been at a lot of start-ups, and have seen a lot of engineers who weren't actually good engineers, but were just there because they knew the one language that mattered, and could somehow make something work. That seems to be the target candidate here. It was also a hard product to get excited about. There is so much competition, and they aren't doing anything groundbreaking. Everyone I talked to gave a short speech about why they love the product, but none were very convincing.