Positive for the most part. I made it through the screener and two remote coding tests. The recruiter I was in touch with was wonderful overall. They were incredibly helpful, responsive and supportive throughout the entire process, and I couldn't have asked for a better experience on that front.
That said, after the second remote test I was told that I passed, but would not be moving forward in the interview process. After asking for a reason as to why, I was given a generic and vague reason. Just a run of the mill "Because data structures and algorithms" and nothing more, even though I was told that I passed both tests. Not to mention, neither of the tests even required anything such as a simple quick sort or a data structure like a binary tree, only a simple linked list was needed for the second test. This was also the same vague reasoning given by a recruiter at Oracle after passing their frontend tests with flying colors (a basic "change the styling of these elements with js") and making it through all four rounds of interviews (1 call 3 onsite, last one was a day long with each team for a meet and talk).
The reasoning made no sense and only left me with frustration, especially considering that I wasted about two months of my time prepping, scheduling/setting time aside for calls and the remote tests (I work fulltime like many others), and having high hopes of advancing further given my solid performance. After being given the vague and seemingly dishonest reason, I was told that should another frontend role open up that the recruiter would be in touch with me immediately. Again, this is just a run of the mill way of saying "see you next lifetime", and it's also dishonest seeing that I've come across recent frontend openings located in my area and have yet to here a word from them. I did not take the initiative to reapply out of principle and seeing if their word would be kept.
My conclusion is that they either didn't have the courage to be honest and tell me the real reason for denying advancement, wanted to hire internally but due to legal reasons had to make it look like they cared about opening the position to outside candidates, knew a friend of a friend who they wanted to hire as a means of getting a quick and easy recruitment bonus, saw my application as being marked as bi-racial (father's side is Cape Verdean, mother's Jewish and Irish) but saw a photo of me and thought I was lying about my ethnicity (I'm lighter skinned), or a combination these scenarios or maybe something completely different.
In any case, it was a great experience during the process, but in the end it left a terrible taste in my mouth.
