I applied online. I interviewed at Aleph Alpha (Berlin) in Dec 2025
Interview
The interview process I had with this company felt quite unprofessional. At the beginning it seemed normal. I had an HR interview, and then they sent me a take-home assignment. I spent quite a bit of time on it and structured it really well, honestly going beyond what they asked for.
After that, we had a session to go through the task. One of the engineering managers on the call seemed to really like it and the way I approached it. They asked some general and technical questions related to the task and even asked me to make a small change live during the call.
The next step was another interview with a different hiring manager. After that session, they reached out and said the engineering manager thought I was a good fit, but not for that specific team. They asked if I’d be open to interviewing with another manager for a different team. I said yes.
I had another interview, and after that they told me the same thing again, that I seemed like a good developer and a good fit, just not for that team. They mentioned they liked my profile and wanted to find the right place for me. Since I was interested in what they were doing, I agreed to go through another interview.
After going through this final round, they eventually sent me an offer. I accepted it and even resigned from my current job. But after I signed the contract and was waiting for the CEO’s final signature, they emailed me saying they had decided to cancel the new hire and withdraw the offer due to some internal changes. There wasn’t any real explanation.
Overall, the way they handled it felt very unprofessional, and the whole experience left a really bad impression.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
They asked technical questions related to JavaScript and Vue.js, and we also had some higher-level discussions about communication and how I prioritize tasks.
First stage was a pretty standard recruiter interview, very easy-going.
The second stage was a hiring manager interview. This was pretty easy, more of a discussion about my experience and ways of working than anything else.
After that was the technical challenge, which I was told I could either do as a live-coding interview, or complete it at home and discuss my solution in the interview. I chose the latter, but honestly this was a mistake. The engineers interviewing me didn't even bother looking at my code before the interview, despite the recruiter asking me to submit it early, and we spent less than 5 minutes discussing my code before we ended up just doing more live-coding anyway. Honestly, it's completely disrespectful asking candidates to complete take-home challenges if they aren't even used to assess the candidates!
The interview itself was an unstructured mess. The interviewer (who came across as very condescending) would think up a question or feature to implement, and then half-way through implementing it he would get me to jump to another random part of the codebase to work on something completely unrelated. Overall, it was just a terrible experience, and I wouldn't re-apply.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Questions about previous experience and ways of working.
Thank you for sharing your experience. We’re sorry to hear about the challenges you faced during the technical interview.
We value our candidates’ time and effort and regret that it wasn’t fully proven during your interviews.
We’re actively working to refine our hiring process to ensure clarity and consistency in how we assess skills and avoid misunderstandings and unmet expectations.
If you’re open to it, we welcome you to reach out to your dedicated Talent Acquisition manager so we can better learn from your specific situation and pain points.
Thank you again for your review and we hope you will reconsider and give us another chance, should the opportunity come around.
Kind regards,
Team Aleph Alpha
it was good. i had 3 interviews. and after coding interview i rejected.
first: Hr interview 30 min
second: enginerring manager 1 hour
third: 2 senior engineers 1.5 hour
it was good. i had 3 interviews. and after coding interview i rejected.
first: Hr interview 30 min
second: enginerring manager 1 hour
third: 2 senior engineers 1.5 hour
it was good. i had 3 interviews. and after coding interview i rejected.
first: Hr interview 30 min
second: enginerring manager 1 hour
third: 2 senior engineers 1.5 hour
