11/6/2024
I applied for a Senior Software Engineer, Frontend role at Sirona Medical on 8/28. I have heard about the company from my old co-worker from Inxeption a few months prior, but I was still optimistic about Inxeption so I didn’t explore this opportunity. On 8/15, Inxeption suddenly shut down, so I took a week off to get myself calm down, updated my portfolio site, and refreshed my resumes.
Sirona Medical is the first company I applied. Within a few days, Shawna reached out and wanted to do the initial screening. The conversation was pleasant, she introduced the company to me and I talked about my technical background and a little bit of my personal details. I liked the culture of the company, the things they are doing, and the trajectory of the company. Shawna feels I might be a match and would like to move onto the next round, a coding round with one of the senior front end engineers.
I did a React project with the front end engineer on 9/11. It was a simple form with multiple input fields. The field needs to be highlighted on focus, and a new UI once the field is filled. I had a good feedback from Shawna in the afternoon and I am moving on to the next round.
For the next step of the interview, I schedule four sessions on 9/20. First one was data structure & algorithm, second one was product demo, third one was design and architecture, and the last one was communication and past work. It started at 11 AM PT and ended at 3:30 PM PT.
I bombed the DS&A portion pretty bad. It was a rotate 90deg question but with obstacles. It may need to use some dynamic programming pattern as well. I had no idea what to do and I struggled a lot. I think it was an unpleasant experience for both parties.
The product demo was awesome, the product is unique and very good at what it does. However, I was still trying to recover from the DS&A round.
The design and architecture went smoothly, by this time, I have recovered and trying to do the best I can. We talked about how front end should fetch the data, manage the state, and refresh the data. How I should manage initial load on a large data set, pagination, and filtering. One hour passed quickly and we enjoyed our conversations.
The last round went without any issue, it’s very standard stuff, talk about past projects, what are my proudest feature, and how to handle obstacles.
Three days later, on 9/23, I received the news that Sirona Medical has decided to move on with other candidates. My feedback was expected, I did poorly in the data structure & algriothm potion of the interview. Basically, they are looking for someone who can hit the floor running, they don’t have the time or resource to train somebody up to speed. Personally, I think I will be able to do the job, but I have been a hiring manager at Inxeption, so I totally understand where they are coming from. There are a lot of candidates out there, they don’t need to take a chance on somebody.
I have to give a shout out to Shawna, she is such a wonderful person. She called me to give me the feedback and also offered help for recruiting resources. At this day and age, that is precious and I am eternally grateful.
This is strike one.