Smartly Software Engineer interview questions

Worst live coding experience in years. Had three rounds in total before receiving a rejection. 1st round: Recruiter call – introductions and fit check. 2nd round: Team Lead – discussion around the team’s project, their needs, and my past experience. Both stages went smoothly; the recruiter and team lead were friendly. 3rd round (Coding) was a poor experience. The task involved setting up and extending a local project. Initially, I received the wrong project. Once corrected, the interviewer started a 60-minute timer before I had time to understand the setup. I had to pass automated tests in an unfamiliar project without the ability to run code directly. Each test run triggered API rule changes with no prior warning, making it harder to track what was happening. The interviewer gave minimal clarification, and the session ended mid-sentence when timer ran out. The rejection feedback was based on assumptions about my skills drawn solely from interview performance, without considering the issues during the session. Unless the goal was to test stress tolerance rather than technical ability, the process felt disorganized and unproductive.

Even if you have been working as a senior software developer for a long time you’ll need to go through technical interview, which is waste of time: The tasks are not difficult, but of course nobody pays you for doing those. When I opened the link from smartly, checked the tasks and immediately closed.