I was excited to interview at Mission Microwave, since it is really close to where I live (~15 min commute) and they have rave reviews on here talking positively about their culture. However, after my experience, it's really hard for me to believe that they actually have a good work culture.
The first step was a standard phone screen with HR, where I discussed my background, why I'm trying to leave my current role, what I'm looking for in my next role, etc. This went fine, except that they hurriedly advanced me to the next round on the same day, which was a semi-technical phone interview with one of their senior engineers.
In this second round, the interviewer told me about the type of work that the company works on and what kind of technologies they used, except he kept going on with barely any room to catch his breath or even for me to ask questions. At one point, he talked for a solid ~3 mins, then ended it on a question for me, which caught me off-guard. So far, it's a little strange, but it's not too bad. I did find out during this interview that the software team doesn't use JIRA, or any other software feature/bug tracking software for that matter, which seemed like an enormous red flag for me and seemed to acknowledge one Glassdoor reviewer who claimed that they don't know how to properly develop software. This was not the only red flag, however.
Towards the end of the call, he finally opens it up for me to ask questions. I ask him if the company allows working from home, or at least a hybrid schedule, as this is really important for me post-pandemic. His response told me everything I need to know about this company; he said that there is currently one "character" who works from home, but that no, generally everyone comes into the office everyday. He also added that, "they work on hardware, for crying out loud", and so everyone comes into the office everyday.
This is the exact same mentality that drove me to leave my previous company; working on hardware doesn't necessarily mean that you NEED to be in the office to do work every day; the pandemic has proven that it is indeed possible to work on hardware remotely as long as long as you have the basic infrastructure to support it (i.e. remotely-accessible lab PC's, remotely-accessible DUT's, etc.) Claiming that "they're a hardware company, for crying out loud" is a really awful excuse to force everyone to keep commuting into an office cubicle everyday.
After asking that question, he said that he knew everything that he needed to know for the interview, and it's obvious that I wasn't a good fit. Still, it would've been nice to get a proper rejection email after spending almost 2 hours on their interview process. It's been several weeks, and there hasn't been any update, so I'm assuming that I've basically been ghosted for this position. Oh well.
