I applied for the Engineering Manager role through Guidelines jobs page and was connected to Matt, their in-house recruiter. Matt was super great, candid and provided open and honest feedback which I really appreciated.
I had several interviews, meeting with the Senior Director of Engineering, as well as a technical interview with a Director of Engineering, and I had the pleasure of speaking with the CTO who shared the companies vision. There were additional interviews, with a deeper dive into database and system design.
Overall, the interview process was very enjoyable and I thought that everyone was super friendly and easy to talk to.
Because there was a technical component, I would give this interview a higher than easy rating, but if you have a technical background it really shouldn't be very difficult. I was also told that not all EM roles have a technical component, so your mileage may vary. Personally, I agreed with the sentiment that an EM should have a technical foundation.
There was one small negative, and that was during the database design component, which had requirements with increasing levels of difficulty. They seemed to take the approach the this was an open ended design with light requirements around it. In reality, the interviewer had one and only one possible design in mind, but he withheld important details to make it clear what he wanted. I had to guess what he was looking for, and he didn't seem happy that I solved the problems in ways that he wasn't expecting. It was also apparent that he was a little out of touch with how long a few of these challenges should take, given that he clearly had intimate knowledge of the solution while interviewers did not have that benefit. I honestly got a little bit negative vibe on this round. There were a couple of comments, such as "well we eventually got there, albeit in a roundabout way" which came off as negative to me, as I was trying to understand a problem that he had obviously seen many times before. He also jumped in far too soon and started trying to drive before I really had a chance to complete a thought. It wasn't a dealbreaker on either side, but it did come across as off putting.