I had applied for a position with Stride a year or so ago and they were looking for someone with more experience at the time but kept me on the list and contacted me over linkedin for this position. So I had a call with a recruiter which went well - he asked about my thoughts on test driven development and pair programming because they follow both of those, along with my experience with agile methodology. So he said he was going to go ahead and set me up on the coffee interview and would also send me the coding test. I actually had the coffee interview before I got results from the coding assessment. The coffee went well and it was interesting to hear about Stride and their projects and processes. It was very casual and a nice experience. My coding assessment was graded and the results came back(they say they will be ready within 24 hours but was about 3 days for mine). I get a voicemail on Friday that the results are ready, so I call back and also email that I am available at any time that afternoon. No response. I don't hear anything until Monday morning so I respond and set up a call for that afternoon. They made me wait this entire time to tell me that I failed the coding assessment. The recruiter went into a spiel about how 'this isn't about pass or fail and that's why we like to discuss the results' - guys, please. It is absolutely about pass or fail. Just email us the results unless you are calling to schedule another interview. The feedback itself is nitpicky. Most of my 'cons' had to do with the running environment setup and not the actual code. To me that's not really useful feedback or at least not useful enough to warrant a big to-do about having a conversation about the results. When you join a company/project you learn their procedures and do things their way and it's not a big deal. In this interview assessment you play guessing games about what they want and then get dinged when you guessed wrong.

After updating my AngelList profile, one of their recruiters reached out to me directly. From there we had an initial screener to discuss the position, what they are looking for, and to confirm my continued interest. I then received a coding challenge which I completed within a week. I personally found it a fun challenge. I think it was a good assessment of ability, well written with an included FAQ to clear up uncertainties, and took a respectful amount of time <1 day of coding. Within a week I got a response that I'd passed the challenge. Next up was an architecture interview via hangouts with two of their developers. For this we first did introductions and then focused on one of the projects I'd worked on from scratch. They focused on which decisions I made and why, the various challenges I faced, and what improvements I'd make to that codebase. At the end of the interview we flipped the script and I got to ask each developer about their experience at Stride. Finally I had a multi-part all day interview at Stride. During this there were two more assessments. The first was a pairing exercise with a Stride developer where I built upon the code I wrote for the coding challenge. I thought this was particularly nice since I always find it sad to see coding challenge code disappear into the abyss with zero feedback or future use. The second was an agile and consulting interview. They gauged how I might perform as a consultant by seeing how you might communicate with clients and deal with difficult situations. They also tested my agile capabilities by seeing what my experience and thoughts on agile were. After each of these assessments there was a break to see if I made it to the next step. After passing these assessments I was brought out to lunch with two Striders. During this time we chatted freely about their experience as developers, coding practices, and their lives at large. From my understanding if you reach lunch you've pretty much got the offer unless if you commit a terrible social gaffe. Finally I got my offer and had the weekend to make my decision. Overall I enjoyed the interview process as it seemed to cover the bases you'd want to cover to evaluate a consultant software developer. It also allowed me to meet a number (7) of employees and get a sense of whether I fit within their company culture. During each interview step they allowed ample time for me to ask them questions and get to know them. This was one of my main selling factors as each employee seemed to both enjoy the work they were doing and to be an interesting person I could easily get along with.