First was a phone call and a take home task. I thought the take home task was reasonable, although it took a while - write a client and server in C++ communicating via gRPC and test it using a test harness written in golang.
Second was an onsite interview. Was met by two developers at the company in the shared office seating area. The interview felt incredibly awkward, cagey and amateurish. They hadn't prepared in any way, and most likely had never conducted an interview before, so we sat in lengthy silence for 10s of seconds between each question whilst they nervously looked around the room trying to think of the next one to ask. Questions asked were a bit of basic trivia on some C++ concepts such as RAII or about a few bits of jargon they'd spotted on my CV. Second part of the interview with one of the founders wasn't much better. In trying to explain the benefits package, he couldn't remember and told me to look on the website instead. He seem surprised that I didn't want to take a lower salary for equity in his company without seeing the terms/conditions of the equity package.
Without trying to sound dramatic this was hands down the worst interview I have ever attended. I am annoyed that I wasted time working on the coding assignment and turning up. I came away with a terrible impression of the company: that these people couldn't run a whelk stall, let alone a supposedly Google/Amazon-beating AI service provider.
