My SDE-1 Interview Experience at Rooter – A Complete Waste of Time I recently interviewed for an SDE-1 position at Rooter, and I must say—it was an absolute waste of time. I went through two technical rounds, spending almost 1.5 weeks preparing and clearing them successfully. However, when I finally reached the last technical round with their CTO, Adhikaar, things took a completely unexpected and frustrating turn. The Final Round – A Joke? Instead of evaluating my DSA, problem-solving skills, system design basics, or backend development knowledge, Adhikaar started questioning me about Kubernetes, Docker, Kafka, ElasticSearch, Redis, GoLang, and many more technologies—basically throwing random buzzwords at me. Seriously? This is an SDE-1 role! How can they expect someone at this level to already have hands-on experience with every tool in existence? Even if someone hasn’t worked with these technologies before, they can learn them quickly on the job. That’s the whole point of hiring an SDE-1—someone with strong fundamentals who can adapt and grow. Good Companies Take Language-Agnostic Interviews Most good companies focus on a candidate’s ability to write efficient code, solve problems, and design scalable systems, rather than obsessing over specific frameworks or tools. At the end of the day, all programming languages share the same fundamental concepts. But no, Rooter seems to be looking for an SDE-2 or SDE-3 at the salary of an SDE-1—a classic fraudulent hiring tactic. They Want Experience but Don’t Want to Pay for It This is a textbook example of a company trying to hire experienced engineers on a low budget. If they genuinely needed deep expertise in Kubernetes, Kafka, Docker, Redis, ElasticSearch, GoLang, etc., they should have been hiring an SDE-2 or SDE-3 instead of misleading SDE-1 candidates. But of course, that would mean paying a higher salary, which they clearly don’t want to do. Message to Rooter HR After my experience, I reached out to some ex-employees of Rooter, and what I found was shocking. Many of your best engineers have left because of internal politics and harassment. The toxic work culture and mismanagement are well-known in the industry. Thank God you didn’t offer me the job. Final Thoughts – Avoid Rooter If you’re considering an opportunity at Rooter, don’t waste your time. They don’t respect candidates, they expect way too much for an SDE-1 role, and they are not serious about hiring the right people. There are far better companies out there that conduct fair, language-agnostic interviews and actually invest in their employees. 🚨 Verdict: Total waste. Avoid Rooter. 🚨