I applied online. I interviewed at Halon (Austin, TX) in Feb 2026
Interview
There was no interview. Initially, I was given a 3-hour Coderbyte assessment with instructions not to use AI. Despite completing it fairly, I was told the engineering team was "convinced" I had used AI and was subsequently offered a "harder" second assessment. This felt punitive; if they doubted my integrity on the first attempt, I’m not sure why a second was even offered. It felt like a revealing look into their company culture. Additionally, the pay range is quite low for the requirements of the role.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Create a function that takes a string made of parens and returns how any brackets must be removed to make the parens balanced with a closing paren.
