Avoid their technical task, complete waste of your time. Initial screening call followed by a technical task around a customer ISA. You are recommended to spend 4-6 hours on this task which is impossible because they specifically ask for “we’re expecting a write-up read me file and working code (PHP preferable)”. Recruiter stated that the readme file was as important as the working code. I probably spent about 16 hours in total on the write up and “working code”. I created a fully working solution using Docker containers and Laravel, including unit tests and browser testing using Selenium. Advanced test cases from the registration process to creating the ISA. To save time I used the Laravel Breeze to handle the authentication, the task was around an ISA so I didn’t want to also start coding register and login screens as well. I pushed my solution to Github, included instructions on how to run the docker containers and also deployed it to a AWS EC2 instance so they could run it directly without having to set up manually. After the technical task, you then have to meet two developers who question you about your solution. Just before the meeting, I checked the database to see if they registered and created an ISA. There was no activity on the site I created which I thought was strange because they were about to ask me questions about it. This is where my frustrations began, how can they quiz me on something they haven’t even used? So upon joining the meeting, I asked the developers to clarify if they had read my readme file and ran my code? Both admitted that they hadn’t. After spending 16 hours on a detailed write up, diagrams, complete working code and test cases, they hadn’t even bothered to look at it! I was furious to be honest and at that point was considering ending the interview. How can a company send absolute amateurs to perform interviews? They did ask me to pull up my code and decided to focus on the authentication layer. This just added to my frustration because the task was around an ISA and I had mentioned in my readme and also told them that I used Laravel Breeze to handle authentication as I didn’t feel like it was important to the task. They dug deeper into how Laravel middleware returns the response in the authentication layer. The next question was how did I encrypt the passwords in the database. Again I had to highlight I didn’t write the authentication code, but you don’t encrypt passwords, you hash them. I have no doubts the interviewers did not like my attitude because as stated I was furious with their disrespect and lack of preparation. It ended with a discussion about their microservices, they seem to like to gloss over it but they are building a distributed monolith. Neither interviewer knew what this was and I had to explain to them that building a distributed monolith goes against the benefits and reasons why you would choose a microservice architecture. So in the end I spent 16 hours on a write up that was never read, code that was never reviewed and a complete set of unit tests that were not even looked at.

The interview process was built up of two stages: Introduction: (Can be classified as a Technical Interview) This stage is an introduction to you as a developer and to dive deeper into the background of previous experiences. It is to be noted that this should be classified as a technical interview and do be expected to answer an array of questions. I would say it's roughly 30% about experience | 65% Technical Questions | 5% Q&A Tech Task: The tech task is a very broad topic surrounding ISAs. The core focus for this stage is based on the candidates code architecture/ planning/ knowledge. The task it self is suggested to be 6hours however from experience unless doing only providing pseudo, this is likely to take a lot longer. This is entirely up to the candidate to how much effort they would like to put in. You will roughly be given about a week to get the task done so bare that in mind. On the tech task review it self, it's lead by the candidate discussing their approaches and the developers asking questions around their decisions. The questions asked does require an in depth understanding of the coding language (in my case PHP). Be expected to be asked questions around: design patterns/principles, PSR and AWS. If successful you'll get a phone call with an offer and the pay range they think you are at. Unfortunately for myself, after receiving an potential offer it fell through at the negotiations (note: there was no wiggle room here. So rather than countering, have time to think about the offer on the table at that time). I'm awaiting constructive feedback. The administration for this process was very slow so do expect this to take a few weeks and not to receive fast responses. Also to note the email responses come across pretty blunt.