Extremely disappointing in a nutshell. I was contacted by a member of the Lightspeed HR team (Katherine) about the position. We spent 45 mins discussing the role, company and my background. During this call, I was told the first round would be an informal chat with the hiring manager. However on receiving the invite for the technical interview, it was apparent that the first call was instead going to be a panel interview that included a Sr Director and another Group PM. This 2nd interview was a behavioural interview that went over my experience and background. Unfortunately, that was as far as I went. I say the process itself was disappointing for 2 specific reasons: (1) The very first warm up? question by the Sr Director meant to make me feel comfortable completely threw me off. The Sr Director mentioned he was surprised that I had an Anglican name (presumably as I am brown) and asked to explain where I come from. Maybe its just me, but I still cannot comprehend how this line of questioning can be considered 'fair game'. I am genuinely curious to know the number of white candidates asked to explain their background because of their name. (2) What was even more frustrating was after spending nearly 2 hours of my time on these calls, the Lightspeed HR team didn't deem it necessary to close the loop. I wasn't provided with any update whatsoever on the outcome of the interview. I sent a couple of follow up notes, but I was ghosted by the Lightspeed team. Bottom line - Please learn to value the time of candidates who invest their time in the process. They deserve a little better. This reflects very poorly on your company and whatever company values/culture you claim to have.

The different exercises were carefully and intentionally crafted, using highly realistic live examples. While this increases the difficulty of going through the interviews, it also projected a good representation of how working at Lightspeed was going to look like. I deeply enjoyed the conversations we had as they were intellectually challenging and very friendly at the same time.