The best remote/zoom interview experience I had so far.
The interview process consist of following stages:
1. Interview with Technical Recruiter
Technical background, previous experience, current responsibilities. Brief introduction to WP Engine technical stack and requirements for Sr. Stuff open position. Special thanks for explaining interview process in details and sharing a lot of useful information about the company and it's core values.
2. Interview with Hiring Manager
Technical background, manager skills. Sr. Stuff engineer's day-to-day responsibilities in WP Engine, team structure, in-depth tech stack and main tech challenges.
3. Take-home Coding Exercise
Very practical task, you don't need to google any weird concepts/theories to complete it. If you have 1+ years, it will take you about 2 hours to complete the task (4-6hrs if you'll write tests and follow all the best practices). The best part about the exercise - you can code it in any language/framework you want!
After my take-home task was reviewed, recruiter sent me a WP Engine Interview Kit with description of all next steps, what to expects, how to prepare, etc. And list of useful interview tips! I wish every company would have something like that!
4. Coding Interview
20% discussed my technical skills and day-to-day responsibilities, 50% review of take-home exercise (why I implemented certain things the way I did, how would I optimize my solution for scenario X), 30% live coding (given code snippet, explain what it does, optimize/refactor it).
5. System Design Interview
Standard design interview question: 30% explain how you build project X from your resume; 70% let's build project Y from scratch.
6. Behavioral Interview
Pretty standard behavioral interview questions.
Key things to mention:
1. The interview process wasn't stressful. Sometimes it was difficult, but everyone was very friendly and very supportive.
2. No BS questions
3. Competitive offer - nobody tried to low-balled me or negotiate me "down". I was asked about salary expectation, I gave a salary range, I got an offer with a fair salary withing that range.
Unfortunately, I had to decline the offer and stay with my current team (to make sure they will survive my departure). Otherwise, I would accept the offer. Was a very tough decision to make.