An initial 'screening' interview with someone in HR, followed by a take home challenge that included using vanilla HTML/CSS/JS to code a web form with custom validation (note: requires overrides and novalidate to supercede built in HTML5 validation features ) and a custom element.
The email sent with the challenge says it should only take 'a few hours' to complete, but it's very CSS and JavaScript heavy and I don't believe anyone could do that without writing a gnarly, hacky one-off or spending a _lot_ more than a few hours on it.
One of the things they mention in their values/job description is that they write code at their own pace. The code challenge time expectation is at odds with that which leads me to believe they're looking for quick garbage, and that's a huge red flag for anyone who cares about the quality of the code they produce.
They don't provide any specific details about why they're not moving you forward, even though you've just spent hours of your time coding something, you won't even speak to an engineer. You won't get an opportunity to discuss front end architecture or best practices or strategy because they don't care about those things, and there's enough evidence of that just by looking at the production build of their website.
If you can get it to load. It takes a full minute for their page with the tutorial videos on it to load. I haven't left my computer to go do something else while a page loaded since 2000.
If you're an experienced, methodical, sane engineer looking for a place where you can make a positive impact and improve the existing code quality, performance, and lazy/careless culture - DON'T waste your time here.
SingleStore appears to be an aging startup that has prioritized (friendships? vacation time? playing with CSS gradients?) over efficiency and it will die a slow death because the people making the hiring decisions are incompetent.
Series F, dudes. And devtools in the production build.
I wish I'd dodged the bullet before I sank so much of my weekend into that stupid challenge.