Yikes. From beginning to end, this was a disaster.
The first recruiter I talked to essentially did a manual keyword scan of my resume on the call ("but can you do REST?") - call ended after 15 minutes and I wasn't allowed time to ask questions.
After that, I was asked to do a screen via Hackerrank. I rewrote the solution 3 times in the allotted time. I'm not a frequent Hackerrank user and it wasn't clear that I would be judged using an arbitrary time constraint. I did finish and was asked to talk to a hiring manager.
The conversation with the HM was pleasant enough, some behavioral questions and time for me to ask questions as well, even though the HM cut the meeting 15 minutes short.
Then I had a virtual onsite loop, split over 2 days. The first day, I spoke to a recruiter who told me I wasn't allowed to look anything up during the interview. However, the first interviewer on the loop encouraged me to look things up as much as I needed. The interviewer also expected me to have an IDE set up to use for the interview, which nobody had briefed me about. I ended up using an ad hoc Hackerrank portal to complete the problem, but we kept getting a Time Limit Exceeded error. I had to switch to my secondary language because the task was nearly impossible to complete in time in my preferred language. But the interviewer and shadow were great! Really made me feel comfortable, and they thanked me for the time spent.
Loop resumed the next day. A junior developer asked me to implement a LRU cache. It was clear the interviewer didn't understand the question very well. When I said at one point we needed a queue to evict entries in a FIFO manner, the interviewer said "you said first, but you *actually* meant last." Yikes! We went around in circles because the interviewer was probing for a specific data structure. However, this was unproductive and felt like I was being berated.
After that, I had a systems design problem. This section also had a shadow. The shadow drove as much as the main interviewer. As a woman with workplace trauma, having 2 strange dudes jerk me through the design process feels pretty degrading and triggering. I wasn't able to finish any one part because they kept insisting I design something else, and then they kept picking at the parts I hadn't finished. This system would require, like, 7 microservices to work - it almost wasn't feasible to design in the time allotted.
Last was an interview with the BR, who asked about previous experience. Went fine!
I felt pretty beaten up after all of that and wasn't expecting an offer. However, a recruiter got in touch with me to schedule a meeting with the hiring skip-level.
The conversation with the skip-level was fine. I asked questions and he answered. I probably asked about internal culture, mental health support, etc. I was surprised to find out that, for whatever reason, after that last conversation, Twilio decided to pass on me. I didn't get any specific feedback as to why, but I guess it had to do with something I brought up. I can't think of anything offensive I could have possibly said.
What a harrowing experience, start to finish. The organizational dysfunction is apparent even when interviewing remotely. Absolutely do not recommend - not worth your time.
