S1 Coding challenge: Take home, suggested to take a week and was allowed to coordinate if I needed more time. Work on a WordPress plugin and perform a few security audits. The final deliverable were pull requests on GitHub.
S2 Slack Interview: There was a decent gap between the coding challenge and this next step. It took about a month for my code to be reviewed, however, I was in contact with my recruiter throughout. They kept me up to date with timelines on their end. Overall it felt transparent. Once my test was reviewed, we moved on to the Slack interview. This interview wasn't technical and focused on my work experience, my interest in the position, and in WordPress VIP and Automattic.
S3 After the interview was my trial. This we scheduled very quickly after the interview. In all, my trial lasted 17.5 hours spread over the course of about 2 weeks. The trial format offered room to explain and express your thinking as well as provided a place to brainstorm and work out solutions with your trial lead. I found this part of the interview process the most fun. The questions were challenging but the feedback was really thorough and frequent and I never felt like I had to find an answer entirely on my own. Once me and my trial lead felt the tasks were completed, my trial was concluded and I was invited to another interview, this time over video call.
S4 Video Interview: This was more of an informal chance to meet my team lead and meet the engineer I'd been working closely with during my trial. It was a great chance to meet the folks I'd been working with and also an opportunity to ask more questions.
S5 The offer: The final offer was another slack chat. This time with my HR point. They asked some logistics questions and gave me the offer. I accepted and they sent the official offer to sign to me during the chat.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
What are two points in the Automattic creed that stand out to you and why?
Communication was effectively facilitated through Slack. A take-home project was assigned, to be completed within compensated hours. Overall, the experience was highly positive.Communication channels were highly effective and streamlined the process. The assignment of a take-home project allowed for focused work on a specific task. This project was completed within the allocated compensated time. Overall, the project management approach proved to be efficient. The facilitated communication greatly contributed to a positive experience.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Automattic (San Francisco, CA) in Jan 2025
Interview
I recently participated in the interview process for Automattic and, unfortunately, my experience was quite disappointing. While the team was professional and responsive initially, my code test was ultimately rejected for a issue that cannot be considered as part of evaluation.
It felt as though they were searching for a reason to reject, rather than genuinely evaluating my overall performance. This approach not only undermines the effort candidates put in but also suggests a lack of fairness and consistency in the evaluation process.
The entire experience left me feeling frustrated and undervalued, particularly given the time and effort I invested. I strongly encourage the company to improve their process by ensuring clear, consistent evaluation criteria and fair consideration of candidates' work.
