The on-site interview was pleasant. Everyone was polite and professional, right away I felt comfortable talking to them which made the overall interview process easier.
The 4-hour on-site interview process was setup with several 1 on 1, or 2 on 1 interviews with different devs.
After the introductions from the first interview which went very very well, I was then presented with some coding challenges with two other developers. This first challenge had me worried, not because of the challenge itself, but because if this was any indication of these developers' creative thinking processes, I might have made the wrong decision on this company. I had hoped they would challenge me on my skills as advertised, and not waste this opportunity on some script kiddy stuff I used to be impressed with back in the 90s.
Let me digress for a moment on the environment of these challenges: I absolutely CANNOT code with people hovering behind me: I locked up and drew blanks; added with being in a small, cramped and heated room, it was difficult to focus and I could not "get in the zone" with coding, but it was what it was and I wasn't going to complain then and there. At this point I decided I was just going to observe them and their skills as coders, having come in with some project management experience.
As I get deeper into this story, this is by no means to be taken as a negative mark on the company or the development team at Interana which I am sure are all competent experienced developers.
I believe the devs were unprepared to become interviewers themselves because none of them presented to me any meaningful questions, or a challenge that was in any way common -- or practical -- for Front-end UI Development which I found to be surprising since my conversation with *some* of them had made it clear that there was a fundamental issue at the company with UI Development and that there was an obvious lack of creativity regarding it; not including the fact that I was brought in the first place for this very reason... or so I thought.
Instead of testing me on the core of my skills for which I was initially recognized, they instead tested me on things I've never had to deal with, was never asked to deal with in the past, and would never even consider dealing with in the most random of situations. And not just because they weren't useful challenges, but because it's a waste of everyone's time and there are already solutions that exist to solve these.
About half way through, I was already feeling that I was not going to fit in with these specific developers: I was thinking how I probably didn't want to join the company to work on Analog Clocks, or Strip Vowels from HTML, or generate Search Result Suggestions from a theoretical endpoint all day, I just wanted to join to develop Front-end UIs.
I understand that these were problem-solving challenges, however these challenges don't actually test developers on their skills as a *developer*, they exist to see if a developer can fit a set of *coding* beliefs built into the ego of the individual conducting the test, i.e. "you're not worthy if you don't conform to my coding ideology."
The devs themselves had some flaws with how they presented the challenges and how they created the problems. Little did they know I was observing them. All but one of the coders were more interested in showing off than actually producing, I can see why some of the others told me that there was a problem with development and why they really wanted someone like me to help guide them out of that little hole they were digging themselves into. But that's another subject on its own.
By the end I knew I was not going to be picked, the concepts of the challenges were simple, but they expected them all to be completed in about 40 minutes which, ironically, I could have implemented a working demo of their v3 product based on their mock-ups in about 30 minutes; including Async calls, Async functions and actual UI interactions.
But instead it was: "Build me an Analog Clock."
The next day I was informed that they passed on me which I was not surprised. I do thank them for giving me the chance to try out and I did learn a lot about the interview process.
It's not just your portfolio and resume skills that gets you far, but also how willing you are to go through some really questionable challenges that will not test your actual skills. You may leave there feeling like it was just one 4-hour long trick question.
But I do like the company, the people, and the location is nice too. I would give them the thumbs up overall.
My advice to Interana looking for new devs: Focus more on challenges that would actually be used on your product. Cliche code challenges are kind of insulting, but ultimately end up wasting everyone's time.