I found a job posting and contacted them. After exchanging a few emails, they scheduled a phone screening with one of the managers, which went well, and then another with one of their senior engineers. He was a very smart, nice guy, and what was scheduled for a 45 minute interview turned into a casual, 90-minute chat about programming and ideas around it. He was really cool and I enjoyed speaking with him.
After the calls, I as given their code challenge. It was a three-part Java development exercise, really uninspired comp sci questions that have no business being part of an interview for a tech company in 2015-going-on-2016. My score was apparently above average and I received positive feedback from the recruiter on my progress.
After this, I was given a "personality profile" quiz. It took about 30 minutes and featured honest-to-god SAT questions. "Door is to Open as Hammer is to X" -- that kind of thing. "Complete the pattern with the next image." Who is this for? How is it used? Why is this necessary? Do I still want to work for this company? None of those questions were ever answered, except the last one, which was moving towards "No."
Finally, I was asked to come in for a final interview. The recruiter, who was very friendly and prompt throughout this whole process, told me that it was the last step and just a meet-and-greet with the team. I arrived, was brought to a conference room, and... found myself in another technical interview. Four different people, one after another, the first of whom was the guy who I spent 90 minutes with on the phone! I was white boarding stuff I had already explained to him, I was telling some other dev the definition of unit testing... I was walking people through the basics of my resume! At one point, they had me sit for 10 minutes while they looked for someone to talk with me and kept popping back into apologize. Because of the delays, the whole thing ran over and I told them I had to leave to make it to another appointment.
The whole process was a mess and made a very negative statement about how they operate. After I left, I emailed the recruiter to politely tell him I was not interested. I never received a reply. The whole thing felt like I was interviewing for a large, "serious" corporation that has lost the ability to move quickly and make smart decisions.
