- Several meet-and-greets with various managers. Focus was on finding team fit. - Take-home design project followed by a one-hour presentation. The take-home project related to slicing and dicing blockchain data. I spent several hours working on this to find the right data store and even had a working demo with some of the sample data they provided. Unfortunately, the project prompt was riddled with inconsistencies and typos that changed the meaning of the requirements. There were many ambiguities as well. I was able to get responses for some of my questions (via the Notion doc of the prompt) but for others I didn't have time to ask clarifying questions. The prompt suggested budgeting 2-4 hours for the project but it took longer than that for me due to the issues with the prompt. The presentation itself was in front of a panel of 4-5 data engineers. I got the distinct impression that most of them were unfamiliar with the prompt since they asked me how my design accounted for conditions that were explicitly ruled out in the prompt. I also used the presentation as a chance to verify my assumptions based on the prompt, and nobody could properly clear things up. My presentation also went into the trade-offs of the system I had designed. One issue was the cardinality of indexed data and I had a large segment of my presentation going over the ramifications and ways to mitigate it. After the presentation I got a rejection email. The recruiter offered to meet and provide feedback, which is rare, so major points in their favor for that. However, some of the feedback didn't make much sense and reinforced my notion that the panel didn't read the prompt. Additionally, the feedback said I didn't address the cardinality problem, despite the fact that I spent at least 10 minutes going over it in detail. The recruiter said she would follow up on that but I never heard from them again. While I appreciated receiving the feedback, it left me a little bewildered. All in all, I would say that their hiring process is very unpolished and in many cases it felt plain unfair.