So I am warning from the start this will be a long read, so feel free to skip my comment.
The reason why this comment is in English is that I know the management of the company is American and reads dou comments.
My experience with the company was extremely negative
Here is my situation:
I was reached out on LinkedIn by one of the companies recruiters/sourcer. She described the so-called role of “Engineering Manager”, and I was intrigued.
We had a quick profiling call and after that, a 30 min tech interview was scheduled. I was surprised why such a short amount of time? So I doubleched with the recruiter and almost convinced her that we would need at least 1h if not more.
So a 1h call is set up with 2 Engineering managers from the Lviv office. This should be the 2nd interview stage out of 3 or 4.
I will avoid using any names since I don’t want to badmouth anyone, it’s more about feedback towards the company interview process.
It begins smoothly, and one of the Engineering Manager asked if I would be okay with some Theory? Sure I replied.
Then by the end of the interview, I noticed that 80% of the questions were related to PMP/PMI project management. There absolutely 0 mentions of that in the job description only:
*Strong project management skills, including conceptualisation, analysis, driving alignment, planning resources, managing milestones and objectives*
I come from a more Agile PM background practical world so that took me by surprise were 80% of questions were theoretical and related to PMI more.
I did mention from the very beginning of the interview that I had no exposure to that, and there was nothing in the Job Description that mentioned that but nevertheless, the Engineering manager continued, as if just to complete a checklist of questions and carry on with this interview.
What I didn’t like about the interview is that person did not allow for another option, only their point of view. No other option was available and only their way was the correct way.
This absolutely baffled me since some cases that I was given lacked so much context and so many assumptions could be given.
The cherry on the top was: What is the purpose of any project?
My response: To bring value, any sort of value, business value, or other.
The engineering manager replied: You are wrong it’s primary goal is to make money.
I would not want to work in a team and a project whose main goal is to make only money. (maybe that’s just me)
After 1h of only him interviewing me, he finally says that he is finished and decides to give a word to his other fellow Engineering Manager which asked only 1 question during the whole interview.
He completely ignored his colleague during the interview process and didn’t even bother to ask if she wanted to ask me some questions.
The other engineering manager asks for the next 13mins other questions, then I get only 2 min to ask a question and give them some feedback and the interview is over.
In the end, I was left with a sensation that I was interviewed by a person with a checklist of questions or someone that wanted to prove to himself or his colleague that he knows something.
I am absolutely opened to feedback, and accept that I made some mistakes and that I don’t have extensive theoretical PMP knowledge.
If this is that important for this role, just change the job description and add it as a *PMP/PMI is must have*. And for the love of God, allow the candidate to ask questions as well, I got absolutely no chance to ask any sort of questions about the type of team, projects, culture, etc.
The goal of this message is for the company to train its Senior Management on how they should interview candidates.
It’s difficult to describe TechMagic in a couple of sentences but I will try. One of the things that stands out from other companies is that people here really care about you, they care about your growth, they care about your mental health, about what drives you. You will be handled a great amount of freedom on how you want to approach things. I was able to run several initiatives which the company supported and helped them to grow and become normal practices.
Also the company is constantly improving it’s internal and external processes. From social package improvements, to improving of process inside the company.
The Founders are very open minded, they will hear you out and definitely support you in your ideas. It’s a workplace where it’s super power are it’s people. Not only that I work with professionals but I also work with very pleasant folks, this just describes the culture in the company. Everyone is friendly and willing to help out.
TechMagic is something special.