The hiring process consisted of the following steps: 1) HR screening. 2) Take-home exercise. 3) Panel interview with 2 Senior Engineers. 4) Panel interview with 2 Principal Engineers. 5) Wrap up with the Hiring Manager. 6) Offer letter. The whole process took around 6 weeks, which was good considering the Xmas holidays in between. From the first step to the last one, the interview style was very conversational and all the people made me feel very comfortable. Especially during tech panels, I never felt it like an interrogation and interviewers were very focused on my thought process, beyond my knowledge and experience. They've been also very transparent with me about the role and team. At a certain point during the process, I really felt like there was a match and finally, meeting the Hiring Manager, he was very willing to clarify any doubt from my side and answer to my questions. On top of that, the recruiter was very professional and worked really hard to answer all my questions and keep me informed along the process. She handled the process with a strong sense of humanity that I had never seen before. Overall, I had a great experience interviewing with them and at the end I was really happy to accept their offer and get on board 🚀.

I applied on the company website. Among multiple positions, HR asked me to apply for another position they see as a good match with my skills and experiences and where they need me for. The interviewers were friendly during the process. The initial call was with the company recruiter. Then I started the process with a home assignment of designing a web application in either GoLang or Java, completely free to choose the language!!! I did the assignment in Java which took me approx 3 hours. The feedback was very positive and strong. The second interview was a technical interview with the team lead with very strong feedback. The third was an easy technical interview with very positive feedback but the last interview with the senior manager had very unexpected and unbelievable results. I have both database backend development and DevOps background, but my DevOps background not only had no value but rather was seen as negative!!! Finally, HR then approached me with a rejection. The reason was given as they are very happy about my strong Java background, but they need a person with strong GoLang background and clearly stating that my DevOps and cloud deployment experience has no value to the team !!!! This is wonderful! Developing cloud software where relevant experience has no value. I just feel that I wasted 6-7 hours of my time with a very disappointing outcome. When I was given the choice to choose freely between Java and Go, what does it mean that your Golang experience is not enough!! why not stop the process earlier and save some time on both sides?

Recruiter approached in linkedin. After a discussion with HR about salary range, and other generic HR questions, an assignment was given. But the position in discussion was already filled. So they considered for another position. After that 2 technical interviews were held followed by a Salary Negotiation meeting. During the first discussion, I asked the salary range. HR gave me a range, say X-Y per year. After all the processes ended, HR called for salary negotiation meeting instead of an offer. Something wasn't right at this point already. I told them my expectation as per the discussion held in the first meeting. My expectation was X at the minimum. Later HR came back with an update that discussions were being made and they might make an offer based on local pay scale which would be around X minus 30K euros. A low-balling offer after all the processes. Salary are deal breakers or makers. They should be cleared in first meeting, which I tried to do. But they lied in the first meeting. Then after all the efforts with assignments and interviews, they came with ridiculous offer. If they are approaching a candidate from locations where they don't have office, they should do the research on payscale beforehand. Also, why would someone leave a local company and join your company via agents if the compensation isn't good enough?