The first part of the interview process was promising. I had a system design interview that was well-structured and engaging. I appreciated the thoughtfulness of that session and felt like it was a good opportunity to demonstrate my skills. However, the second round felt very flat. The interviewer read questions directly without much engagement or feedback. It felt more like a checklist than a conversation, and I wasn’t sure if my responses were being heard or considered. The final round was unfortunately the worst. It was supposed to be a combination of live coding and a discussion of my project history, but it turned into live coding followed by yet another system design interview. The interviewer seemed visibly disengaged — making faces, sighing, and even disappearing off-screen during parts of the coding challenge. When I asked clarifying questions about design constraints, I received confusing and inconsistent responses like “use whatever you want,” only to be met with visible disapproval when I followed that advice. It left me with the impression that they weren’t interested in evaluating me fairly, and I’m relieved I wasn’t offered the position. It’s unfortunate because the mission and early interview stages showed promise, but the overall process felt disorganized and, at times, disrespectful.

The team at Nava failed to show up to 2 interview times and was over 5 minutes late to the 3rd time. At one point the team at Nava told me that at Nava you will work lots of unpaid overtime to meet deadlines, but that is ok since you can take unlimited mental health days afterward when you are burned out. For a company that supposedly cares about their employees this is red flag since preventing burnout should be a high priority.