Octopus Energy interview questions

Standard interview. Relaxed environment be yourself. Transparent. How do you like to work. Whats exciting about about you your family your values your ability to be to learn and fitness active job.

DON’T WASTE YOUR TIME ON THESE PEOPLE! I had an initial 30 minute “informal” chat via webcam. Octopus made a very good impression and agreed that the next stage would be “no more than a 2-3 hour exercise - make a simple app”. They said in our first interview that no matter what I will have a chance with a follow up call to “discuss my design, coding choices and anything else to fully understand my thought process”. 5 days passed and I received the requirements. The test requirements were VERY basic but to the point - “make this picture into a real app” and make a couple of tests. That’s it. I spent 5 days working on this prototype app. FIVE DAYS! There is no way this was a couple of hours work. I really gave it my all as I really wanted to impress them (I have over 10 years experience). I made them a few extra features that were never mentioned such as additional menu options and so on. The app looked identical to the picture with buttons that worked. I submitted my app and code around a week later after receiving it. Another week passed until I received a badly worded email, without paragraphs and spell checking saying “we don’t want to progress with you”. This came as a total shock as I never even got a chance to discuss anything technical with them, despite being told in my first interview I could discuss my code to them in another round. Five days wasted. The feedback was bizarre such as: “the extra features you made do not do this” - the test said turn the picture into an app. Weird being told my extra freebies are not good enough. Very negative. “you didn’t do it the way we do; therefor we assume you don’t know how to do it” - very very strange negative comment. I had to use an exact library Octopus used otherwise I’m deemed wrong. Very weird. “no evidence making it work for bigger screens” - no such requirement was given! I’m being judged and assessed on points that aren’t even mentioned in their test. A bit like “make an impressive cake…actually I prefer chocolate inside but you made it using cream. You fail”. I made you “the cake” over multiple days…you’re failing me on ridiculous terms. I am somewhat dumbfounded by their rejection and refusal to politely follow up with a conversation which was mentioned a few times in our first meeting. I spent 5 days of my own time for them (a couple of days working into the evening) just to have a secondary chat with them. Their response was insulting, rude and made me angry to be honest. There were no further opportunities to speak to them; i’m just dismissed with negative points to make me go away. The thing that hurts the most is that I gave up a lot of my own time trying to go above and beyond just so I could speak to them again (I assumed at the time they’d keep their word and no matter good or bad I can discuss what I’ve made with them)…they couldn’t even be bothered to remain true to their own word or even have a polite conversation with me for 30 minutes. If they did they’d of learnt my reasons for doing parts in certain ways and they could have questioned further to understand if I knew certain topics in greater detail. I was being judged on things they never asked for (I had a single picture to work with…nothing else). I believe most people don’t even bother submitting anything on tasks like this which I can now understand why…why do all that work for someone to reject you with a paragraph. Their list of why they won’t progress was shameful and rude…their quote: ”we will just assume you don’t know this”….ASSUME…why not ask me? If it was that important why not explicitly add it as a requirement in the test and let me explain in more detail…? I was so angry about this whole thing I showed another senior developer their comments such as “code not formatted properly” and he was open mouthed at their response. “Wow…that’s just plain rude, wrong and unprofessional” was his response. I get the feeling that unless your face fits and wants to be one of the many young cheap grad types living the company values 24/7 you aren’t going very far (I’m not even that old!). I could be wrong but it’s the feeling I get. It’s got a cult vibe to the place. Think twice before giving any significant time to Octopus Energy so you don’t end up in the scenario I did. Plenty of other firms are willing to talk with you directly instead of sending out rejection emails of assumptions and incorrect statements.