zlacker

>>terafl+(OP)
Whether they are malicious or not, I cannot say. But anecdotally, are they a time-waster? Absolutely.

I took their generalist test and scored perfect. It was actually not so hard, but it tested some language things (a couple/few languages), some Unix things, SQL, etc. It was right up my alley.

After completing the 30? min test, I got an email saying they were enthusiastic about me and would like to continue the process.

I think the process was to become an interviewer; I forget now.

Time passed... weeks, and then months. I emailed them and got nothing back.

Then I checked Glassdoor (YMMV). There were a lot of negative stories about internal politics, gender issues, leadership problems, "insane" bad manager stories, etc. I don't know how Glassdoor works, but perhaps it was all lies; or perhaps it was very true; perhaps it has been erased (pay to play).

Nonetheless, I parked them in the corner of my mind behind Toptal.

>>z9znz+E9
I had a silly interview sequence with Toptal. Aced first interview. Was told "that's a record for solving that".. so, got to do a live, not take-home test for the second interview. Was clearly within 3 minutes of finishing up the last bits on the test suite on the solution for a 2 hour long test when the buzzer rang. Nope, no grace -- you clearly haven't proved yourself. You have to do the take-home ( A 4 day window for a take-home test ... which means, you need put in 40 hours!) I told them "no thanks".

>>42e6e8+5r
For Toptal, I progressed through the initial interview, the two timed algorithm challenges, and faced the human-observed algorithm challenge. I passed the first of two tests with him, and on the second test I realized at 17 minutes out of 20 minutes that my approach was totally not going to work for the complete problem set. So at that point, no matter what I did, I was out.

I didn't even get the "privilege" of doing the 40 hour take home project (which culminated in a formal business presentation that some people reportely failed despite turning in a polished project".

Later I found complaints of Toptal members that they were pressured to provide low wage offers to get gigs.

Overall it felt like perhaps an ernest initial effort to make a better system and a quality consulting firm, but it got perverted into a heartless profit machine. I'm glad I didn't progress to the 40 hour take-home stage.