Just finished my Costco interview.
[Warning] If you're interviewing for the Costco e-commerce team, stay away from this team. The manager who interviewed me was disgusting, and I'd guess this team's reputation is probably already ruined by him.
He started by introducing himself as the manager of some team and said this position was under him. Then it was my turn. I said I worked as a frontend engineer at my previous company, and that my project was about X, Y, Z... His follow-up was, "so you didn't work on frontend at this company right?" I was a bit confused. I had literally just said I did frontend development, so it felt like he wasn't listening at all. I had no choice but to introduce that job again from the start... and then he said, "oh. okay I got it now.."
Then the technical question: a product is deployed on Google Cloud and has a frontend interface. Only 20% of users see the page loaded, while 80% of users only see the spinner and never get the page. How do you debug it?
I answered: "first start with client side -> check log for any javascript error or react error to rule out client side issue." Then I would look at any config or deployment change. I asked him, "did this issue only start recently or has been around for a while?" He immediately got very serious and said, "No, it is around for a while, we Costco is a large company and we don't leave issue hanging for while you know. we fix problem quick." I said, "okay, i was just clarifying since i don't have the context." Then I continued, "there could be config change or deployment change that leads to this outage for most of users, so I would like to narrow that down..." I hadn't even finished when he suddenly cut me off, loudly: "No, i don't want you to narrow down! just walk me through how you will debug it."
By this point I was already pretty annoyed. I've never run into an interviewer this rude. I've given the same kind of answer in every interview before and never been challenged on it. I won't go through the rest of my answers in detail. At the end of the interview he just said, "based on our conversation, i don't think you are good fit and i will have to pass onward to interview other candidates." This kind of unprofessional behavior was a first for me, and I said, "I don't like my conversation with you, and the culture clearly don't fit me." Then I hung up.
I'm posting this so you can avoid this team. I've already sent this interview feedback to Costco HR. More people need to know about this manager.
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