I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Middesk in Nov 2025
Interview
1. Recruiter call - nice
2. Easy technical screening - nice
3. Four-hour panel interview:
HM Talk - questions were aggressive, got interrupted multiple times;
Web API / DB technical question - not focusing on coding, but you must know all steps from DB creation to endpoint development;
PM brainstorming - nice;
System Design - focus on collaboration - nice;
Result: rejected, refusing to give feedback.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What improvement were you supposed to make for a certain past project?
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Middesk (San Francisco, CA) in Dec 2025
Interview
Interview Process:
Round 1: Recruiter screen
Round 2: Technical pair programming on CoderPad
Technical Round Details:
The coding assessment was straightforward and backend-focused, involving business verification logic with REST API/TypeORM results. The problem was practical and relevant to Middesk's work—primarily JSON parsing without algorithmic complexity.
Feedback:
I completed approximately 90% of the assessment but was rejected for "insufficient technical performance." When I asked the interviewer about completion expectations and performance criteria, she spent the remaining time discussing her personal experiences at the company rather than evaluating my problem-solving approach.
Concerns:
Having a junior engineer (10 months experience) conduct technical interviews for mid/senior positions raises questions about assessment consistency. The interview seemed to miss its stated purpose of evaluating thinking process and problem-solving skills. The mismatch between the straightforward nature of the problem and the rejection reasoning was puzzling.
Ad hoc interview process. Flakey recruiting process. Weak seeming ICs misread printed out test results during coding interview / didn’t know about blob storage during system design interview. Does not seem like a promising company.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement some API endpoints that parse input data and save to a database