Alpaca interview questions

Applied online in July 2024. Received first availability request in December, eventually invited for an interview in April of 2025 after few more requests. 1. First interview: screening with a recruiter. 2. Second interview: tech director, past experience and some quiz knowledge. 3. Take home task. 4. After few followups, an additional 15 minutes interview with a manager. 5. Multiple followups from my side, eventually resulting with an interview with the team. Standard SD (medium level) + GO/PostgreSQL trivia. 6. Follow up interview with a recruiter. 7. Interview with the CTO. Overall, the process took one year. There were few hiccups happening on the way: 1. Extreme length of each step - 8 months to start with interviews and another 4 to complete. 2. Original position I applied to got closed during followups, resulting in automatic rejection letter sent to me, confusing me on whether the process is still going. 3. Recruiter have not recognized me between initial and follow up meetings scheduled with them. 4. One of the interviews scheduled with the team was not delivered to my mailbox, resulting in a missed interview - which was quickly rescheduled. Among the pluses I can comment on: 1. All the technical members of the team have been extremely pleasant to speak with and showed exactly traits I value in teammates and managers. 2. Take home task was challenging and interesting to work on.

I had an initial screening with the hiring manager, then a take home test, and then a technical live coding / system design interview. I was a bit disappointed that I was never asked about my solution to the coding test in the technical interview as it was an interesting problem and could have provided a good discussion. My interviewers were friendly and professional, however the process wasn't well organised. As others have mentioned, I had to chase up the recruiter after submitting my interview availability, and after asking about the format of the technical interview, I never got a reply. A simple response telling me to expect some live coding and system design would have helped me prepare much better.