Sloppy, slow, waste of time for everyone involved. Too many rounds, sloppy process, and if you don't use GraphQL daily already don't even bother applying, tech lead for the project ignored a mountain of other skillsets I brought to the table because my current role is not GraphQL focused. Pretty much every person I met in the process was awkward minus the director who seemed entirely unsure as to the direction the company was going. Literally, nobody explained what the product did that made it valuable in the same way and nobody seemed to have confidence in their future. Disorganized and unprofessional interview process and so very very slow. Everyone I interviewed with had questionable experience prior to joining the company. Lead interviewer in final interview clearly had no idea how to actually design cloud systems or simply wasn't even considering that useful experience. Literally, all he went against was GraphQL conventions which of course is NOT my background and apparently my REST examples were not good enough. Odd, given how they are common patterns. I explained multiple times in the process I would brush up on GraphQL after getting the role but apparently that's the only thing they care about so they wasted their time and mine. I was also effectively punished on "system design" because I didn't know what common types of data they might consume look like and they wanted me to make assumptions (again, I would normally be expected to learn this as part of onboarding). Recruiter ghosted me after my final technical (or maybe they waited to see if another candidate would accept before reaching out to me) but if that was happening it was too late as I accepted another offer. Salary was on the literal lowest end of what I'd consider anyhow for what seemed like an incredibly boring role making middleware, stay far, far away unless you are a masochist.

Very positive overall - phone screen, 2 technical rounds, and a more casual chat with your future manager. The internal recruiter follows up quickly, and everyone is enthusiastic about their work