The interview process had some good and some bad parts. I would say from the start that I didn't got an offer.
The discussion with the recruiter was really nice and productive. She asked me a few things about myself and my experience (including some small technical question) and then she told me more about Revolut, about the way they are doing things and I kind of felt like it would be a good fit for me.
After a few days, I had the live coding challenge and that went well. I was asked the implement three easy tasks, one depending on another. The only observation I would have here would be the fact that the interviewer and a strange english accent and a few time I had to ask him to repeat his question. All in all he was a nice guy, giving me a lot of information about Revolut and how they work.
Then I've moved to the third and last stage, for me. Here everything was different then the previous interactions. Two guys interviewed me (although only one was tasking, the other seemed to be busy with other things). Right from the beginning I felt like he was rushing to the finish. He asked me to introduce myself and after I said a few work he interrupted me saying it's enough. That didn't felt nice. Then we have started the coding part of the interview and I was asked implemented some concurrency exercise. I have implemented almost everything the way he wanted, but at the end I couldn't implement the last requirement, but I've described correctly the solution (as he confirmed). After the coding part the real interrogation began. And I'm not exaggerating. It felt like an interrogation. He asked me a lot of questions regarding databases, concurrency and some other things without providing any feedback or giving me some details about how they are using that concept/pattern. It wasn't a pleasant discussion at all.
The interview process had some good and some bad parts. I would say from the start that I didn't get an offer.
The discussion with the recruiter was really nice and productive. She asked me a few things about myself and my experience (including some small technical question) and then she told me more about Revolut, about the way they are doing things and I kind of felt like it would be a good fit for me.
After a few days, I had the live coding challenge and that went well. I was asked the implement three easy tasks, one depending on another. The only observation I would have here would be the fact that the interviewer had a strange English accent and a few times I had to ask him to repeat his question. All in all, he was a nice guy, giving me a lot of information about Revolut and how they work.
Then I've moved to the third and last stage, for me. Here everything was different than the previous interactions. Two guys interviewed me (although only one was tasking, the other seemed to be busy with other things). Right from the beginning, I felt like he was rushing to the finish. He asked me to introduce myself and after I said a few words he interrupted me saying it's enough. That didn't felt nice. Then we've started the coding part of the interview and I was asked to implement some concurrency exercise. I have implemented almost everything the way he wanted, but in the end, I couldn't implement the last requirement, but I've described correctly the solution (as he confirmed). After the coding part, the real interrogation began. And I'm not exaggerating. It felt like an interrogation. He asked me a lot of questions regarding databases, concurrency, and some other things without providing any feedback or giving me some details about how they are using that concept/pattern. It wasn't a pleasant discussion at all.
The next day the recruiter called me and gave me the feedback. It seems that I was not a good fit due to my technical knowledge. I was really surprised. They said I didn't know concurrency because I didn't implement the last part of the coding task (which had kind of three in total), even if I correctly described the solution. But the thing that really surprised me is that they said I don't know some concepts that I am 100% sure I've answered correctly. I am not upset about that, but it's not something pleasant. All interviews have a dose of subjectivity and I can live with the fact that maybe they didn't like me.
The suggestions that I have would be, first of all, to increase the duration of the interview. I've felt really rushed to answer the questions. The second one is to send engineers with people skills to interviews. A "bad" interviewer makes a bad image to the company. It's not only about seeing if the peoples in front of you know all of the questions you have. It's also about making them want to join your company.
