First interview was a screening interview with the Hiring Manager. I answered general questions about my CV, some technical questions and general questions about the job. At the end I answered my questions from him. Hiring manager was positive and asked me to go through a 4 hour exam for next step. After I passed the skill assessment, I interviewed with Senior Recruiter in HR and had conversation about position and answered questions, last question was about salary which I asked their offer and the range they think about. The answer was vague and the HR was changing his numbers three or four times. I was ok with general range and then I went into 4 technical interviews. First thing I have to mention here is, in 4 technical interviews, first two interviews are with senior data scientists and next two were with junior data scientists. To me senior and junior was just title and both senior data scientists were joined to Skillz less than 2 months. ​ The first technical interview was about coding skills. Question was fairly easy and I did it well. The Interviewer asked some questions about the coding exercise, but nothing too complex. While he was coming with his comments and questions, I was very responsive, and continuing my code. I finished the code and then interview the interviewer. My impression was very good! The next interview was about a data science applications case. I felt either the interviewer was inexperience or was very unfriendly to me. Again the question was very easy and I was feeling good cause I answered the question good. At the end I asked my questions and interview the interviewer. Next I gave a presentation explaining my machine learning software development projects to junior data scientists and analysts Which was very good. Then, I received a rejection from HR, which I am not sure if it was about salary, or technical decision or change of plan. I was not happy or unhappy but my main thought is the group is junior and there is not a firm plan. After 10 hours of interview with positive feedbacks I was feeling it should be an offer! All of the employees and recruiters were friendly and respectful just one of the technical interviewers was a little angry or stressed or etc.

First interview was a basic screening interview with the recruiter. He asked me several basic checklist questions then answered a few questions about the company for me. I was then asked to solve a basic data science problem on one of those skill assessment websites. They gave me 4 hours to solve the problem, although I didn't use all 4 hours. In between this time, the recruiters encouraged me to try out the Skillz app and play some games on it. After I passed the skill assessment, then came the technical interviews. The first technical interview covered coding skills. I did some live coding in Python to solve a basic data analysis problem that involved writing a function to process some data. The interviewers asked a couple questions about the coding exercise, but nothing too complex. I solved the problem early and used the remainder of the hour to interview the interviewer. The next technical interview covered a data science applications case. No coding involved. The interviewer walked me through a data science use case that is relevant to Skillz, and asked me to explain how I'd solve it and asked several probing and technical questions along the way. Again, nothing too difficult and they're looking to probe how you think as a data scientist. Again I finished the interview early and had time to interview the interviewer. Next I gave a panel presentation explaining a relevant data science project I've worked on. Although not necessary, I prepared a presentation for this panel discussion and then the panel asked me several questions about my project and background. Again I had extra time at the end to interview the interviewers on the panel. Next I finally met with the hiring manager and had the opportunity to discuss the role in detail with him. The hiring manager mostly had questions about team fit and explained the opportunity that the position presented. It would have been nice to meet the hiring manager earlier in the interview process. At this stage, the hiring manager decided to discontinue my interviews because my asking salary was too high, despite the glowing feedback I had received from all of my interviews. If the interviews had continued, I would have met with some of the executive leadership to assess company culture fit before being considered for an offer. It was a bit frustrating to have the interviews discontinued at such a late stage over salary -- especially after I spent about 10 hours total in interviews, skill assessments, and interview preparation -- when they could have just as easily discontinued the interviews at an earlier point when I set the salary expectations up front. It seems to me that Skillz is looking to hire more junior data scientists at the moment (read: younger and cheaper), so keep that in mind if you're more seasoned. Skillz has a young team and there is tons of room for growth on the team. In all, it was nice talking with Skillz's data science team and learning about the company. All of the employees and recruiters were friendly and respectful. I don't regret applying, despite how things turned out.