Coming out of the interview process, I came away with thinking that Health Catalyst would be an amazing place to work, but would give the overall interview process a less than favorable review.
The most difficult part of the process was the lack of communication on how it was carried out. There were 3 stages: a 30 minute phone interview, a take-home coding project, and then a panel video interview going over coding and behavorial questions. After the phone interview, I was notified within a week that I had moved onto the next stage, which would be a coding project creating a web API using .NET and simple front-end using a Javascript framework. This project had a deadline of one week, and I was told that most applicants spent at least 10-20 hours working on it. After putting in the time and completing it well within the deadline window, I did not have any feedback from Health Catalyst for close to 3 weeks, even after I had sent a quick follow-up email just checking if the project was still in the grading process after a week and a half of silence. After finally getting notified that I had passed that round, I had a panel interview going over some coding and personal questions. Overall, the interviewers were great at answering questions and the coding problems were fair. The most disappointing part was the fact that there was absolutely zero feedback from the take-home project and it seemed like the interviewers had not looked at it themselves. It is not fair to expect an applicant to put in so much time into something that overall did not have much impact on the job offer decision.
I would give the following advice to those looking to apply for this internship:
1. Avoid applying if this would be your first job as a software developer. The feel I had after the interview was that it was a position geared to someone who already has significant experience as a software developer.
2. Have experience working in the .NET framework and with Angular. There was no mention of any meaningful mentoring program in the internship, and it seemed that it was expected to hit the ground running. Without prior experience in these technologies, it would be impossible to work with the team.
3. Don't spend too much time or energy on the take-home project. If it isn't something you can finish within 10-15 hours, you probably are not cut out for the job in the first place.
I would say that Health Catalyst looks to be a great place to work, and somewhere that I would consider applying to after gaining more experience. This is a very competitive intership with very few openings, so make sure that you are a qualified applicant instead of going through a long interview process with little chance of getting an offer.