I had several phone screens with HR before receiving an invitation to meet with technical staff at the athenhealth office in Watertown, MA. The interview process kicked off during lunch with a software developer, including informal discussion of athenahealth products and my own professional experience described in my resume. During this part of the interview, the interviewer related a story of a colleague who attempted a lateral move within athenahealth's organization--apparently, in an attempt to escape a difficult business travel schedule. I was saddened to learn that the interviewer's colleague was not able to transfer, since she failed the interview process for the internal position to which she'd hoped to transfer. She had been with athenahealth only two years and was forced to leave the company. I learned that internal applicants do not receive preference at athenahealth and are subject to the company's strict, highly selective interview and hiring process. After the lunch interview, I participated in one 90-minute programming exercise monitored by a software developer, one interview with senior technical staff (architect), and finally, one more 90-minute programming exercise monitored by another software developer. The technical exercises were challenging and required brainstorming to work out example cases of an algorithm, followed by a formal description of the algorithm, and lastly, a working implementation of the algorithm. The entire interview ran from ~11:30am until ~5:15pm. I never received HR feedback on my interview, nor did I receive responses to my follow-up emails 1 week after the interview. Overall, I have mixed feelings about the experience. The employees I met seemed mostly pleasant, although I sensed an undercurrent of nervousness and stress. They are keen to hire to a "cultural fit" standard defined around puzzle-solving. It is similar to the interview process at Google and Amazon, but with a twist. The marketing and recruitment videos are well produced and made me interested in learning more about the company. But the lack of HR communication makes me wonder if athenahealth does enough to make a good impression on candidates. Interviewing is a two-way street! And the relative lack of internal mobiliity in athenahealth also worries me.