I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Midnite (London, England) in Jan 2025
Interview
- I was recommended to apply for the position by some of the engineers in the company as they thought that I could be a good fit with all my experience.
- Initial interview was with an internal recruiter. She was very nice and knowledgeable. We had a good conversation about my motivations and experience etc.
- The next stage is a take-home exercise. It was quite simple - to build an API endpoint.
- Third stage is a 1.5h technical interview. This is the weakest point of the whole process. The interview:
1. Interviewers introduced themselves.
2. I was asked to give a short summary about myself. I worked for some big well known companies so they had a few questions about it.
3. One of the reviewers encouraged us to discuss the take-home exercise because of limited time. I explained my solution and answered a couple of questions related to the implantation.
4. Once again, we have been encouraged to move on to the next stage. It is a small `leetcode` exercise. I was a bit confused by the purpose of this exercise - it was so random and out of place. It is beyond me why they didn’t ask to extend the existing endpoint or something relevant to their own domain. For the third time, I was encouraged to “cut corners” and try to rush it. The outcome wasn’t pretty because I had issues with their editor (their view was - it is your problem so deal with it) but I managed to explain the solution and had a good start.
5. We transitioned to a system design exercise. I won’t lie, at this stage, I was a bit mentally drained from all of this shifting from one subject domain to another + all the natural stress from the interview. They had a few questions / suggestions and I think I arrived at a functional solution in the end.
6. They still had some questions related to my previous experiences / motivations - we discussed them.
7. We ran out of time but the team was happy to stay a bit longer to answer my questions.
- My main issue with the technical stage is that it has too many parts and you are given no time or space to complete them. Most candidates experience some level of natural interview stress and all this mental jumping isn’t helping. Also, I didn’t feel like I was given a chance to present myself (I wasn’t asked about my ability to work with product team / support juniors or anything about previous projects) - they came knowing nothing about me and left in the same state. I would recommend them to split this stage to two different stages and give a bit more time so there is no need to rush.
- Their feedback was a bit comedic. They set me up for a failure and had the audacity to blame me for it. I haven’t seen such rubbish feedback in awhile.
- While I had a negative experience with their process - I still would recommend applying. I feel like the team is lacking technical maturity and it is an interesting opportunity to fix / improve for those who are interested.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What are my opinion about types or strongly typed languages
1. Chat about experience and past projects.
2. Take home task.
3. Go over task, system design and algorithm test.
Reason for experience rating: When an offer came it was for mid level, rather than the senior level I applied for. There was some vague feedback, but it didn't really clarify why my profile wasn't senior enough for the position. The interview process otherwise was okay and it moved quickly.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How would you productionise the code you've written in the take home test?