After an initial telephone interview, I attended two in-person interviews. The first was with three team leads and the second with two team leads and a business person. The CTO was supposed to be present for the third, but was not. It was revealed that the company does not have a full-time CTO and that he is only working part-time. They are in dire need of someone who can provide solid direction and rope in their “team leads”. They should be looking for someone higher than a Development Manager.
The company has a lot of junior software developers, who have become “team leads”, some after only two years. While they may know the product, they do not know the software development process very well, based on the types of questions and lack outside experience. The company uses Agile Scrum on one team and Kanban on another.
Most of the questions from one interview to the next were exactly the same. Either they did not communicate the responses to each other or they were working off a template.
I found most of the people pleasant, with a couple of the “leads” rather abrasive, perhaps trying to invoke an emotional response - not going to happen when you have a skilled manager in front of you. The way I look at it? Someone with 20+ years is sitting in front of you, and a guy with a couple of years under his belt is questioning everything I say. It really only makes him look bad. Probably why the senior business person was in the room.
Later, I received a rejection email that stated I lacked “assertiveness”, probably since I remained calm and collective during the “leads” argumentative nature. Again, looks bad on them. Not doing further follow-up on that concern, shows a lack of interviewing experience.
It seems some of the GlassDoor reviews are accurate. The company lacks diversity and some of the questions were focused on that. I believe probably I was glossed over due to my age, they would want someone young. They see the problems they have, but continue making them.