This is absolutely not the place to apply to if you have a college degree in anything related to programming. Extremely shady interviewer/recruiter who outright lied to me on the phone. I was beside myself. I had been actively interviewing with several other companies, and I never had an experience like this. Right off the bat, red flags: they tell you the interview call is being recorded for "quality purposes." Never heard of that anywhere before. Very weird. Then the interview itself is easy, just a recruiter, nothing technical other than describing your background and what you're looking for in a job, et cetera... but the next red flag here is that the guy sounded like he was legitimately reading off of a script as he spoke, stopping at unnaturally regular intervals to ask "do you understand?" / "does that make sense?" when explaining what the job is like. I'm guessing this is for some kind of legal reason if you try to sue them if you come to your senses at some point to try to get out of their contract, they have a recording as proof of your verbal acknowledgment of your understanding. The whole thing feels like a scripted sales pitch--he started going into statistics of how great the company was and how many candidates get hired into “real” software engineering jobs (with pay that is sub-par at best) after the (severely) underpaid period, as though he was truly trying to convince me that the opportunity was worth pursuing. I get that sometimes companies will boast about some things to keep your interest in them, but the way everything was worded felt very unnatural and not at all genuine. A weird part that was clearly scripted was when he asked, "So how's your job search going, it's pretty tough out there and hard to even get an interview right now right?" as a clear segue into the rest of his sales pitch. I cordially agreed that it's a tough time for tech hiring, but that luckily I had several interviews scheduled throughout the week that I was also excited about... he more or less ignored my response and just continued on with the rest of what was clearly his script. Again, very weird. Then, if you're willing to move forward, they send you a multiple-choice test to complete within a week. I told them I was interested in moving forward because I was curious about what the test would be like. About 50 questions that you're given 50 minutes to complete, plus a study guide to look at beforehand. The test was very clearly written by someone who is not fluent in English--grammar and clarity mistakes left and right. And if you had a B average or above in your computer science classes you'll get through the test in maybe 30 minutes. You do not need to look at the study guide whatsoever. They also proctor it with your webcam and microphone. Now, I know I answered exactly 3 questions incorrectly. The recruiter calls me up afterward and asks how it went; I say it went well, because I know it did. And he then proceeds to tell me that I didn't do very well, and that I need to go through 10 weeks of unpaid training before I can move on. I kindly asked him to tell me what I got wrong in each section, and he said he didn't know, "they" don't give him the exact questions, "they" only give him percentages of the candidate's scores in each section (who is "they"?). So I said I understood, and then I asked him if he could give me the percentages I scored in each section instead. He refused to tell me, despite having just admitted that he knew what the percentages were, because he "already gave me an overview". But really it's clearly because he knew they were higher than he was making them sound; he knew he was lying about my scores, of course. Now, I am lucky because I know my skill level very well and I know that I did not do poorly as he said I did. But it makes me sick thinking of the fact that they could be taking advantage of fresh grads with little to no professional experience but still with a solid skillset, lying to them to get their confidence down regarding their skills, and they're inexperienced so they believe it and take it to heart. All just to get them to eventually agree to sign up for a legally-binding position that is seriously underpaid and likely way below their skill level. That is truly awful. That sets them up for failure for later interviews they may have with other companies if you consider how important confidence is in having success in an interview. I used to think that the business model makes sense, I get it in theory and I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with it theoretically--sure it's not a model that's for everyone, but I thought it could help some people get their foot in the door if they have little to no background in tech. But in practice, the fact that they'll outright lie to skilled candidates just to get them to sign up for severely underpaid labor under a legal contract? It is morally reprehensible.
