Complete waste of time.
Company recruiter reached out on LinkedIn. Though I had some reservations about the company (many positive GD reviews were questionable due to high number of “Great” reviews in a short period span as if it was a forced attempt to bring up their rating), their product was pretty cool so I took the call.
The initial 30-min call was with the recruiter, followed by a 30-min, one 90-min, and three 60-min video calls over 5 weeks. Unlike other companies where different interviewers focus on different areas, there wasn’t much of a theme/focus each round. In fact, many of the same questions were asked by three different interviewers. The third interviewer was clearly annoyed when I pointed out that they were the third person to ask the same question that was not “tell me about yourself” or “why Glowforge”. It’s unclear if there wasn’t communication between the interviewers or if it was intentional to see if my answers would be different. If it was the latter, then it says a lot about the culture of the company. Worth noting the interviewers were very homogeneous.
After each call except the last 90 min call, the recruiter reached out asking how the calls went and gauge my interest. I lost interest after the last call due to lack of clarity on how they would measure my success in the role and the interview panel being very homogeneous. I didn’t bother following up and the company eventually sent a generic email from their ATS few weeks later.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Glowforge (Seattle, WA)
Interview
This company is not looking to hire you, they only want to steal your ideas. They make you sign an NDA and ask very specific questions about their issues they face as a business, which seems like their biggest hurdle, their lack of growth. They will dangle the idea that the next step is for hiring you and then make up another excuse to ask more questions to steal your ideas. The worst part of the process is that at the end they will bait and switch you the job you were applying for to offer you an hourly consulting job (that is still part of the interview) so that they can take your ideas and then not hire you. Do not apply here, total joke and waste of time. Their HR team is very inconsiderate and their associates seem unhappy working there. I also noticed that the current leaders are very incompetent and/or lack background/experience necessary to excel in leading a startup team. Upon stumbling on these reviews, I believe they created a system to grow their business without the need to hire with their interview process, by taking your ideas. Additionally, I have never interviewed with or met leaders at a company that seemed so fearful about their CEO, seems like a lot of trust issues exist within the company.
