I applied to Remote in the beginning of December.
As part of the application I had to answer to seven relatively long questions. I spent more than one hour applying for this position and more than 6 weeks later I didn't get any answer from them. They even specify in the email that you get after applying that you'll receive an answer from their side even if you're reject, but I guess that's not the case!
Quite a waste of time applying here.
We appreciate your feedback regarding the application process. We apologize for the delay in response and any inconvenience caused. Your input is valuable, and we are actively working to improve our communication and streamline our hiring procedures. We regret any frustration this may have caused and thank you for your patience.
Negative experience
Average interview
Application
I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Remote (London, England) in Oct 2024
Interview
In my first couple of interviews, I was told that after the coding challenge, there would be a follow-up interview where I had the opportunity to discuss my solution with the engineering team. I was obviously very disappointed then, that after spending in excess of 15 hours on the coding challenge, I was not even given the opportunity to discuss my solution with the engineering team at all, and was instead given some feedback that I didn't agree with.
I found some of their feedback to be unfairly pedantic, asking for things that would have added a lot more time to the already long coding challenge, such as typos in the documentation (something I specifically called out in my write-up as having not had enough time to do).
Some of the other feedback notes given were valid concerns, but they were things that I could have easily defended my decision-making for in a conversation with the engineers. Specifically, there was feedback that "[My solution] was slowed by synchronous waits [...] counteracting the benefits of parallel email sending.". This is a valid concern, but the problem statement was unclear about the expected return of the endpoint. I had to decide whether the code should wait and return a completed result or just return an incomplete result immediately. I went for what I thought was a more straightforward option after performance testing my solution and finding it to be an adequate response time, but the team was not happy with my choice.
The challenge also asked for "production ready" code, but production code should not be created by individuals without input from other team members. I would have thought there would be more value in discussing my solution and my approach rather than just taking it at face value.
Overall, I feel somewhat disrespected having given so much of my free time to this activity only to be given feedback that I disagree with and not being given an opportunity to discuss the nuances of the problem with the team.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Build a Phoenix app with 2 endpoints to manage users.
Thanks for your review. We're sorry to hear that our rejection feedback wasn't as helpful as it could have been. We strive to provide valuable feedback to all candidates, and we'll use your input to improve our process. We appreciate your honesty and wish you the best in your future endeavors.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Remote in Sept 2024
Interview
Their engineers do not seem to be the brightest lightbulbs. The engineer interviewing me had difficulties comprehending that with a Master's degree in Computer Science and 6+ years of experience, I can be skilled in more than one area of software development. The engineer expected all my answers regarding professional experience to be revolve around Elixir, which is a rare programming language. Despite having experience with developing backends from scratch in Elixir and dedicating part of my Master's degree to studying functional programming paradigms, the engineer did not like that my most notable career achievement is connected to mobile app development.
From the way the engineer talked about their engineering team, it looks like they hired too many unqualified people and now they are a bit stuck with at least half of their 250 engineers fighting with Elixir (at least that is what the engineer interviewing me said).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What mistake did you make when developing something and how was it fixed?
We're sorry to hear that you had a negative experience. We aim to provide all candidates with a positive and meaningful interview, and we apologize if this was not your experience. We will be taking your feedback on board and making changes to ensure that all candidates feel valued and engaged in the future. Thank you for your honesty and for helping us improve.