very lengthy process: initial HR screen, technical interview, part 1 of onsite, part 2 of onsite, conversation with founders. Overall, I think the company is in a very interesting space with lots of room for growth. First initial round went very well: recruiter seemed very enthusiastic about the company. technical screen after that went great as well: easy to sense the enthusiasm for the company when I got the chance to ask the engineer questions. Additionally speaking, the question we had went over was basic OOP, so wasn't very difficult (should be straightforward for most engineers with work experience). For part 1 of the onsite... can positively say that this was a much different experience than my conversations before. I was told by my recruiter this would be a 'deep technical dive' into my background, but... they didn't really seem that interested. I was prepared to go over my background in detail (as the recruiter mentioned it would be a 'deep technical dive', but... that wasn't really the case. Got asked a handful of questions that wasn't related to the job description ("what is the best code you've ever written?"). I do kind of wish what I was told by my recruiter actually reflected what to expect in the interview (that way I could've been well prepared). i've experienced this multiple times in other interviews, but when following a list of questions for an interview, I do believe interviewers need to have a good understanding of keeping the conversation flowing and organic. There were multiple awkward pauses in part 1 of the onsite and can say the conversation was much more...one-sided since they were definitely preoccupied with going through their questions (vs keeping the conversation organic). Additionally speaking... when I got the chance to ask questions, some of their answers seemed contradictory to some of the 'Vollues' (company values) they have on their website. Ultimately though, one-sided interviews is certainly not something specific to Volley (and certainly not all interviewers are perfect), but it goes without saying that candidates do respond better to two way conversations. they're a startup afterall, so was not expecting a perfect interview process + well trained interviewers, but definitely believe they will continue to grow as the years pass by.

The screening call with the recruiter went smoothly and was very straightforward. After that, I was scheduled for the next two interview rounds, which were combined into one 1-hour and 50-minute session. Technical Challenge (First Hour) The first hour was focused on a technical challenge. I could choose between JavaScript or TypeScript as the language. The task was to simulate the movement of an elevator. They provided a code sandbox with predefined class and function names. However, the problem description was extremely minimal, making it hard to understand what each function was supposed to do. Instead, I had to rely on reading the unit tests to figure out the expected behavior and return values. Essentially, the whole challenge was designed around reading and interpreting unit tests, then writing code that would pass them. You weren’t expected to plan or design any data structures— in fact, I was explicitly advised not to overthink it and just write simple code to pass as many tests as possible. Some example function names included: * hasActiveRequests() * request(floorIndex) * advanceOneFloor() Here’s a sample unit test provided: const e = new Elevator(10); e.request(3); expect(e.hasActiveRequests()).toBe(true); e.advanceOneFloor(); expect(e.currentFloor).toBe(1); e.advanceOneFloor(); expect(e.hasActiveRequests()).toBe(true); expect(e.currentFloor).toBe(2); e.advanceOneFloor(); expect(e.currentFloor).toBe(3); expect(e.hasActiveRequests()).toBe(false); e.request(1); e.advanceOneFloor(); expect(e.currentFloor).toBe(2); e.advanceOneFloor(); expect(e.currentFloor).toBe(1); expect(e.hasActiveRequests()).toBe(false); Behavioral Interview (Second Hour) Immediately after the technical portion, I had a behavioral interview with a manager. He seemed genuinely pleased with my structured and detailed responses. The questions were typical for a behavioral interview. Some examples included: * “What’s a complex product that you led, and how did you navigate it?” * “Can you give an example of a time when you had to balance technical debt and speed?”