Anyone Interviewed at Fly.io?

I've also had a not so cool experience with them, the interviewer canceled 30 mins before the call and mentioned they will send an email to reschedule tomorrow. That was in September 2021, haven't heard back again :)

I applied to Fly.io and a big part of that was because of their hiring process. Reading about the way they think about finding good candidates resonated with me. The role for which I applied was something I am deeply interested in, and would love to get into, might _possibly_ have the chops, but for which I probably do not yet have "the" resume. It felt like a Hail Mary to apply but I figured if nothing else I'd learn alot in the process and if I'm really lucky, might even get some constructive feedback.

I didn't clear the work sample but man, I had fun doing it. I learned a ton. I most appreciated that they gave me legitimate feedback as to why they decided not to move ahead with me. It highlighted a gap in my current knowledge/experience that I was glad to discover.

That being said, it did take a very long time to get a final answer back from them, but overall I'm a happpy reject. Could even see myself applying again some day.

I interviewed for a role there, got quick replies to my emails too. Didn't need to use any credits to do the challenge (but they mentioned that I could ask for it if I wanted to). The challenge itself was not easy, and I assume that was exactly what they were aiming for. Besides the interview I've already talked with them and they were really friendly and eager to help (it was not a business talk, I'm doing some academic research and wanted to discuss some things regarding networks/infra-sec). I believe you just had the wrong idea, specially when you mention "some weird sales tactic".

Edit: in my experience, the code challenge made a lot of sense.

I'm the Retail Sales Manager at Fly.io. How can I help you?

We're happy to take the credits back if they make you uncomfortable. (I kid. I kid.)

I'm currently doing so. I'm pretty early in the process, and I've had a great experience thus far: quick replies, nice challenge (it was actually a challenge for me because I haven't touched the relevant language/framework in many years), and I generally appreciate these sort of interviews (I know I'm an outlier; unpaid work isn't a huge deal for me).

Out of curiosity, what did they send you, and what do you find weird/off about the process? It's definitely not the norm [0] but isn't it better than spending a bunch of time working through back-and-forths in "normal" hiring pipelines?

[0] https://fly.io/docs/hiring/hiring/

I have, for an engineering position.

I put the experience on GlassDoors, but in general... it's fine, but took way too long.

On plus side. The coding challenge was amazing and I learned a lot doing it. I passed the first code challenge, then I didn't pass the followup exercise which was on slack. It was very clear that the exercises are directly related what I would be doing.

On the negative side, the whole process took far too long and there were around 1 month delays in all the messaging. That made me think I don't want to apply there again, because I don't have infinite time in my life. However, if you can afford to wait, it is fine.

I sent an email a year or so ago about their unpaid pre-interview homework project (a non-starter to me). I got back an email from a real person, though I didn't pursue it because of the homework and an unrelated issue.

For posterity I talked to them tonight, this was legit and it's something they're working on internally. No love lost, just a little confusion.

I recently did the hiring challenge for the platform role. My solution worked really well and I thought the code was clean but they told me that I didn't score well enough to move on to the next round.

I asked about leveling since the fly.io hiring page claimed to be hiring levels 1-3 and I didn't see how I could be screened out of consideration for level 1. They did not reply.

They were polite and gave credits as well, but I really thought the programming challenge was ill defined and broad. From the interviews and challenges I've run, it was much too broad and really required rereading and a lot of assumptions. Their response wasn't very clear either. Could have just been me, but I've never run into that situation anywhere else/

I will say though, they were very polite.

Maybe they're outsourcing their hiring to some third-party firm?