First a recruiter contacted me via LinkedIn and gave me a rundown of the interview process, which only included three interviews at two different times: 1) the Life Story Interview and 2) the Pair Programming Interviews. I set up the Life Story interview first using the link she sent me. The Life Story interview allows you to talk about how you’ve became a developer and my interviewer, Robert, really encouraged me to start from the beginning (think childhood or high school). The conversation was very relaxed and he asked me questions here and there, seeming to be genuinely interested in me as a person and as a developer. I was also able to ask questions at the end about Shopify and he gave me a lot of good information, especially on how they have managed changes regarding COVID and the move to a 100% remote company. Robert got back to me by the end of the day and said that I was moving onto the next and final interviews, two 75-minute pair programming exercises with a 15-minute break in between. Due to their quick process, I had to schedule the interview that same week. In the Pair Programming Interviews, the questions I got were not the regular LeetCode questions, but still a bit abstract from problems that Shopify probably faced. There were a couple of positive differences I noticed between these interviews and others I’ve had with other tech companies. Both my interviewers told me to look up stuff on Google or StackOverflow or anywhere else that would help me solve the problem. They also had frontend and backend versions of one of the problems, giving me more of a chance to show what I know rather than struggle. The problems themselves weren’t difficult and I managed to complete the first one in time while I got stuck on a weird bug in the second. (Normally, I don’t finish the coding exercises in these kinds of interviews.) Two business days after the programming interviews, I got a message back from Robert saying that they were not going to extend an offer to me. He said that they were ‘very fortunate to have so many qualified candidates interview with them, and the result has been a very competitive process.’ While I’m disappointed, the email seemed sincere and not just the same ol’ “there were better candidates” canned response companies usually send. Overall, the process was fast and relatively painless. Definitely would go through it again if the opportunity presented itself.