I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at HealthVerity
Interview
1) 15- 30 min recruiter call
2) 3 + hour take home
3) 30 min tech lead call
4) 3-4 hour onsite
5) phone call
Reasons why I stopped interviewing:
1. Disrespectful of the interviewee and employees' time:
They were generally late/disorganized/took forever to get the right people and questions up etc. Called after hours without scheduling and their staff seemed to use their personal phones/phone numbers, which to me is a red flag. They also said multiple times that they regularly have crises where everyone has to work late. Also I kept getting spammed with demographic surveys from them, which wasn't really a big deal but I found it pretty annoying
2. Random cattiness/condescending culture.
75% of the staff were completely normal people (the recruiter, direct manager, and one of the guys on the tech call were super friendly and great) but 25% were strangely passive aggressive towards me. I can't exactly explain it but just kind of speaking in a way that sounded like assumptions were being made about my intelligence/thought processes and motivations. Even when I tried to make comments to correct that, they kind of steamrolled over me and told me what I was thinking.
3. If I understood correctly, I suspected possible redundant hiring
It seemed like they were building a whole new team because the team they currently have can't do their job. The tech situation sounded like a nightmare. Analysts also want you to jump on long zoom calls to help them. Now I guess it could be most efficient to have a team of lower paid sql guys and a smaller team of people with more skills to clean up after them, but I don't want to be that person. Keep in mind, this wasn't a senior role with senior pay either it was I think 120-140, basic title.
4. I believe their whole model is actually just selling health data
I thought they were a value based, helping insurance providers + people with insurance work out costs kind of company, but I got the impression it's just selling data (mostly to big pharma). It's technically deidentified but it made me uncomfortable.
Also, as a bonus, they called me after I had already emailed saying I was no longer interested to tell me I wasn't a good technical fit although, the response to my technical take home was very positive (I was told they were very impressed multiple times). This felt kind of petty to me
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
In-person technical:
What is the difference between a default dict and a dict?
What is a generator function?
What are the 6 basic parts of a SQL query?
What are subqueries?
What is an inner join?
What is a left/right join?
take home (this is approximate):
Write a script that can find common elements between two lists 32 chars x 1 million rows, what would you change if it was 1 billion (write a spark app). Now what would you do if there was a repeated key 10 million the same.
Other parts (approximate):
How do you stay connected at work when you are remote?
How do you feel about long spontaneous Zoom calls of indefinite length?
How do you feel about working late (required at least at the end of every quarter, at deadlines and at the end of the year)?
Why are you interested in healthverity?