It started with the standard recruiter call followed by a basic Java quiz (luckily, it takes 10 minutes). Then an awkward technical phone screen with no live coding, only trivia Java questions while the interviewer constantly nudged me to give exactly the answer they had obviously written in their script. Just one question regarding my last position, but when I tried to get a bit into the technical details, the interviewer cut me off -I guess I had already used all the time they had allotted for that question. There was plenty of time at the end to ask questions, but all I got was canned responses about how great Chewy is. The onsite experience was just OK. First, a short interview with a manager to discuss the way of working, then a whiteboarding session with an engineer. I proposed different implementations to the problem discussing the pros and cons, but the interviewer was only interested in the answer they already knew and didn't seem to fully understand the alternatives. Third, another technical interview mostly around my last position. It was a nice chat, perhaps a bit shallow. No system design questions. Last was a talk with a director, giving a more general view of the company, followed by a brief tour of the office with the recruiter. Although the recruiter clearly stated "this is the end of the road for us", a couple of days later I was contacted again to have a live coding call because they weren't sure I could code. This shows how flawed their process is, with a phone screen that's basically a waste of time and an onsite that's not enough to reach a decision. Anyhow, I accepted in spite of having lost all my interest. The live coding only included one classic question (finding all permutations for a given string). I started the solution stating that we should check for valid input and decide what should be the response for null, but that I was going to focus on the core of the problem first. I implemented a correct recursive solution and then the interviewer asked "But what would happen if for instance we had a null input?" as if it was a great gotcha. Three days later, I got a rejection call with some vacuous reason. It seems they focus a lot on Java trivia, but don't have a very good system to judge something as basic as the coding skills of a candidate.

Recruiters were super helpful and accommodated my request to reschedule the interview (because of personal matters). All interviewers were very friendly and the interview was more like a discussion with your teammate.