Application was responded to within a half hour and was asked to schedule a phone screen with some times to choose from Short (30-min) Phone Screen was scheduled for next week. Phone screen was fairly standard. Some things that stood out to me: - Company just raised a small seed round from Chicago investors - Product is in early beta testing with only a handful of clinicians (expanding this year) - Danny, the CEO, is the only full-time employee - The job listing had said "remote is ok" -- Danny contradicted this and said that WFH occasionally is ok, but he wants core team to be on-site. I said I was looking for remote and spoke about benefits of being remote. Danny did not say that was fine but nor did he say it wasn't, which gave a mixed signal... Worth noting is that the equity numbers on AngelList cap out at 1% for this role, despite it being the first full-time hire, a lead role, and the company having only raised a seed very recently Danny said the next step would be a coding challenge and that he could do another call to answer my questions. He said code samples would suffice as an alternative when asked Coding challenge seemed to be structured well -- it was realistic (i.e. no brain teasers), was related to the domain, and asked for docs explaining rationale, etc. It had been iterated on a bit and the instructions seemed to have gotten better. I have asked candidates to do a very similar challenge with similar instructions I provided many code samples instead Danny did not respond to my email. I hadn't taken a huge chunk of time unpaid to do the challenge, but I still had to curate a list of contributions. If I had done the challenge and he did not respond, that would have been extremely disrespectful. I followed up a week later and then he responded, apologized, and scheduled a call. He apologized again during the call The second call, meant to answer my questions, was very downhill. Danny was unable to give a concrete answer to my very first "management practices" question or follow-ups (I have ~20 such questions). This one was about how would Danny prevent overwork, late nights, and weekends on the team. As a mental health company, I thought this would trivial to answer for him -- I was wrong. He said people should take time to "recharge", but that of course there would be "variable time at a start-up". I asked to elaborate and he gave an instance of on-call support and said people could work hard for 3 days and then not come into work the other 2, that it wouldn't necessarily be 9-5, that he wouldn't be counting when people are "in their seat" This does not answer the question of how to prevent overwork. I gave some real methods: tell people to go home if you've noticed they've been working long hours or counting hours or days off for the reverse purpose -- flagging when people have been working too much. Again, this felt strange to have to say to someone running a mental health start-up He said he would "trust" people to take what they needed and to tell him when they felt overworked. This fails to address the industry standard that is "unlimited vacation which actually means no vacation" and also fails to address the fact that by being CEO, he is in a position of power -- people do not just tell their boss "hey you've been working me to the bone" (one can almost certainly expect retaliation). Overcoming that is not as simple as "trust" I asked how he would build that "trust" and he said by working together on a start-up, team outings, and getting coffee or beer together, summarized as communication and building a relationship in and out of work. This isn't necessarily incorrect, but failed to address the fundamental difference being in a position of power -- so I asked about it explicitly. Danny said "is that a question?" and I said "uh, yes" He immediately responded with "I don't want to waste your time any longer but this doesn't seem like it'll be a fit. It doesn't look like you're looking to work at an early-stage start-up". That last sentence was inflammatory and I had to retort -- an early-stage start-up does not have to be a sweat-shop. That's a false equivalence. If you want to run a sweat-shop, I question the morals & ethics by which you're running a mental health company. Not to mention, I've spent virtually my entire career in early-stage start-ups and have started and ran many more than him -- I found it insulting and revolting that he had the audacity to tell _me_ I don't belong in an early-stage start-up. And telling someone that they "don't belong" is pretty repulsive -- don't expect any form of inclusivity from this CEO. I agreed that it's not a fit. His approach is overly simplistic and does not address fundamental problems. He seemed to, in a very hypocritical and ironic fashion for someone running a mental health company, prefer that people work long hours and trust him just because of team building activities