I had a very disappointing experience interviewing with Zoe. Before the live coding interview, they sent an email that included a small note about setting up the development environment in advance. Unfortunately, I missed that detail. As soon as the interview started and I realized the issue, I immediately apologized and asked within the first two minutes if we could reschedule so I could properly set everything up. In my experience, this is completely standard. Most companies either clearly emphasize environment setup requirements or explicitly state that if the setup is incomplete, the interview will be rescheduled. Instead, the interviewer responded that “every candidate needs to do that” and that it would not be fair to reschedule. Despite the awkward start, I worked quickly and had the environment 99% ready within about 20 minutes. At that point, the interviewer ended the session, saying we needed to stop. Throughout the interaction, I felt there was little flexibility given the situation. If the goal is to assess programming ability, the focus should be on problem-solving skills, not penalizing candidates over environment setup technicalities. A company that values engineering talent should prioritize a fair evaluation process alongside procedural consistency. Overall, this felt overly rigid and poorly handled. I would have expected a more constructive approach from a company conducting technical interviews."

Generally good though very long. It was a 5 stage interview. 1. A 30 minute screener interview with the internal recruiter 2. A 90 minute coding test on Codility. The problems are simple to medium level but your score will probably depend on how well you can apply algorithms knowledge to make the solution performant. 3. Reviewing some React code as if doing a peer review for a junior colleague. The interviewer was very friendly, we got on well and it was a pleasant experience that gave me lots of opportunities to show my expertise 4. A backend interview going through system architecture and asking questions about my approach to building out a backend system for a specific purpose. Again, plenty of opportunities to show knowledge. The engineer interviewing seemed less experienced at interviewing, but still a good chat 5. A behavioural interview using the STAR format to answer questions like "What's your biggest challenge in your current role?" or "Tell me a time when you dealt with a conflict?". I dislike this kind of interview because it seems so artificial and hinges on having specific answers ready, but it also went fairly well and the interviewer was good. In total that process took 5 hours. I received positive feedback from the video interviews and was asked for my availability to meet the CEO which I gave. After that I heard absolutely nothing. The process had been positive up until that point with responsive communication. After investing so much in the process it was disappointing to have no contact. I suspect the reason was due to my salary expectations, but a brief rejection email would have been fine. I'd worry about the functioning of the company internally if they can't give simple feedback to someone who has invested a significant amount of time in them.