I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Ridgeline in Nov 2024
Interview
Very pleasant people to speak with, but the process is a little wonky.
One red flag is that, as others have mentioned, they have a bizarrely obtuse React CAPTCHA challenge that screams death by a thousand iterations. We spent about half the interview confirming the esoteric requirements. Like any other interviewee, I second-guessed whether pushing back on a bizarre user experience might be part of the test, but it really did not appear that way. Luckily, I passed, but I have no idea if this gave me a weak signal to the team or not.
One of the final rounds was with other engineers, which was more of a discussion. It was a panel of 3, who kept talking over each other and framing the question differently. This left me guessing who might be the most important person to address, but still trying to satisfy all three panelists, to an extent. Again, I had almost no idea if I was giving a good answer here, having to read the reaction and tone of three separate engineers. I understand the desire to have multiple engineers on hand to help the decision along, but most processes have them as *shadow* interviewers so that the conversation is more focused. Not sure what happened here.
Anyway, I lost out at the last round, and the recruiters were very gracious in extending a courtesy debrief over the phone. I mentioned some of these pain points, but of course the recruiters themselves are somewhat powerless to shape how the engineering team chooses to hire. I hope someone there is reading this and rethinks parts of the process, because again, the team was delightful to speak with otherwise.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Implement a CAPTCHA system with these requirements.
Thank you for the candid feedback and for taking the time to go deep on the challenge. We’re actively discussing ways to continuously improve the experience with our engineering hiring team and appreciate your perspective—it helps us build a better, more thoughtful process.
Other Staff Software Engineer interview reviews for Ridgeline
Had a tech screen followed by a react interview. The react interview was very interesting, not because of the question, but because of the interviewers. The question was practical but the interviewers were expecting it to be done in a very very specific way that they want. They derailed my implementation a couple of times which I felt was not necessary and only caused confusion. I got the sense that the interviewers are just trying to protect themselves from someone who could possibly make changes to the environment they are comfortable with. I was hesitant to write this review, but after reading previous reviews about others having the same experience, I had to write this to validate the previous reviews. The new director should really review the process to avoid losing top talent.
I applied through a recruiter. I interviewed at Ridgeline in Aug 2024
Interview
1 HR / recruiter call, 1 behavioral call, 1 technical interview and a whole slew of on-site interviews.
I studied python for exclusively solving leetcode problems since python is usually faster to finish with less semicolons and other syntax errors to slow down the process. I started to lose ability to solve actual problems in java / javascript so I stopped practicing python and leetcode. I asked for a take-home assignment instead of a technical round since I lost a lot of my leetcode / python skills. I'm also a lot more engaged when the problem is real and hoped to show my strengths. I was assured they'd collaborate with me on a problem in 'CoderPad' and didn't care if I solved it.
I solved the problem pretty slowly since I forgotten some of the python code. I kept thinking about the optimal way of solving the problem since I saw this problem a long time ago and knew of a clever way to solve it, but don't remember the little trick. I also kept getting hung up on what to call the variables since the problem is not grounded in anything real. I was told they wanted someone that can dive into code. I can dive into code but in this case I clearly need to study more leetcode if I want to work here. Thankfully I found a job elsewhere that was willing to accept a take-home assignment and I didn't have to go on-site for 5 hours.
Interview questions [3]
Question 1
what did you build previously in context of this role?