Typical first round with recruiter.
Second round was technical design question with one engineer. A system was half built and you were supposed to solve a scaling problem.
Second round interviewer I got was incredibly hostile and was constantly interrupting me in what seemed an attempt to "get me" not to see how I collaborated or what I could build. He would jump down my throat constantly and put words in my mouth about my design trying to simplify or imply design choices. I actually managed to answer pretty much every concern he had by the end of the interview but I wasn't surprised when the recruiter said I had not made it to the next round because I think this guy never planned on passing me to begin with. This interview ruined evening and actually made me mad every time I thought about it for about the following week. I still can't get it out of my head.
Disappointing, this seemed like a great place to work, but if this is who is going in front of prospective candidates I don't understand what they are thinking. He seemed like he had made his mind up before the interview about what his decision was and tried to justify it by making it so ADHD that I couldn't ever get a clean design for anything.
There were two interviewers shadowing the entire time to "learn" about this process. What are they learning? How to turn people away?
I have over 15 years of professional Rails and DevOps experience. I was cold contacted by one of their recruiters. During the initial phone screen, I asked not to be recorded over Zoom due to standard data privacy preferences. They refused an abruptly ended the call. Utterly unprofessional. If you value privacy, data security, or your own time, look elsewhere. Bullet dodged.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Podium
Interview
Was contacted by recruiter and had an introductory call. Then was promised a follow up later that day. He never followed up, and once I reached out, I was ghosted.
I applied online. I interviewed at Podium (Lehi, UT) in Nov 2025
Interview
Spoke with the recruiter. Standard getting to know you interview. After that, was handed a HackerRank test. If I were to pass that, there would have been something similar to a in office interview to demonstrate additional critical thinking. After that, a culture fitting type interview.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Needed to write a rate limiter, demonstrate REST API knowledge, and mySQL knowledge.