TL;DR; I was ghosted. There are three rounds. First one is basically a screening call. The second is an on-site technical. Based on the feedback, I did well and was told to expect a final interview the following week. I wasn’t contacted and followed up to see if I had been dropped from consideration. I was told that an interview was still planned. This repeated a couple more times, where I’d wait a week, not hear anything, then reach out again and be told that an interview was still planned. I suspect my salary requirements were too high, but other than their fully paid health insurance, the benefits are not great, particularly the PTO. The interviews themselves were a good experience, but the communication was lacking and I have no idea what happened. I did ask for feedback twice, but it’s radio silence at this point.

First interview was with the VP of Engineering. More of an introductory call to learn about the company and learn about your skills and experience. A very relaxed interview and pleasant conversation. Second interview is technical and onsite. You are first given about an hour to design the data and system for an email tracking application. Then you are given about an hour to implement this design. The whole thing takes about 2.5 hours. Honestly, its refreshing to see a technical interview that evaluates so many aspects of your experience and lines up with what they are looking for in skills. The third round is a culture fit interview with the CEO and the executive team. This is a very high energy fast paced conversation mostly with the CEO. They'll ask you about your working experience as well as a series of personal questions and they expect quick and to the point answers. Be prepared for them to make jokes to each other and interrupt you. The process to evaluate your technical skills is very well structured and fair. Unfortunately I have to be another addition to the list of negative experiences while in the interview process. They state that they are only looking for the best talent and willing to pay top dollar. This really motivated me to keep going with the interview process and was able to land an offer. But the cash offer was just at market rate and factoring the lack of benefits (only 2 weeks vacation, no retirement benefits, no other perks or benefits) it actually falls below market value. They do offer share options but they aren't currently worth a lot and take several years to vest. Apart from the executive team, the engineering leadership is competent and are looking for the best. Given this, I still wanted to join them and tried to negotiate a higher salary. I explained that I would be getting a pay cut and wanted to see if we could find a compromise. The executive team did not like this and ended up taking back the offer the next day. It was unfortunate that they weren't willing to listen and negotiate with me, this was my first time that a company decided to take an offer back by just trying to negotiate with them. Overall I had a negative experience. The VP of Engineering has a very good evaluation process and from my conversations with them, they seem very knowledgeable and easy to work with. Apart from them, the company seems to be looking for people who will blindly oblige to their rules. My advice to potential candidates: If you really need a job or really believe in their product and want to work for them, just accept what they offer.

First round is a video call with the VP. Second round is on site. Diagraming a data model and systems design for a service that tracks transactional email. Then coding a portion of what you designed. Third round is a culture fit interview with the CEO. Everybody there at ChargeZoom was quite nice so I'm dismayed to have to add to the numerous reviews about ghosting. If candidates spend multiple hours, especially on site, interviewing with you then it should be common curtesy to send a rejection. Just a little disappointing for what seemed like a great team.