The interview experience is terrible. I completed a much more ambitious project than I needed to, demonstrating the ability to pick up a complex new framework quickly (React Native). I also implemented a very thorough auth system demonstrating mastery of secure programming (proper salting, message signing, defense against timing attacks.) That didn't matter one bit, I got denied for omitting a requirement which wasn't in the listed requirements and for not communicating to clarify the requirements. Whilst I understand the value of timely communication with real clients, I assumed these guys could get their own assignment requirements correct.
In addition to all this, you will get a much lower rate than you're expecting. While it's true that you set your own rate, they basically told me if I don't charge at the same below-salary rates as the rest of the people on their network, they won't send business my way.
So huge waste of time on the interview, plus you'll make less than a salaried position for the advantage of sporadic work and no benefits. Stay away if you know what's good for you!
Were you interviewing for one of the Core developer teams (the ones actually building Toptal), or for Toptal to work as a freelance developer (to work on Client projects)?
Toptal has a lot of open (internal) positions and their interview process is different than when applying to work on Toptal as a freelancer. Everyone on the Core development team is remote.
Is there anything positive anyone who uses toptal can share about them vs other services? It seems others are concerned about the interview process and rate fixing
The good things are you don't have to chase down clients for payment or constantly hustle for gigs like other freelancer sites, it's like a temp agency they do all that for you, and you work for established companies (AirBnB ect) so hopefully the person telling you what to do has an idea of what they're doing instead of constantly asking for the impossible. You can also easily set own hours, so check in and out whenever you want.
The bad of course is wages unless you're living in a country with a very low cost of living or you just want to use toptal to gain remote work experience and don't mind not being payed Silicon Valley standard then it's probably not worth it to you to work there being there's dozens of jobs on hnhiring threads and other sites that will pay at least 2-3x as much.
Wow thanks for the HN thread. From that it looks like they were called out for practices and decided to astroturf the thread with fake positive views. There are a couple of 'current toptal users/devs' on there that clearly just created their account for the thread and never posted again after.
Doesn't seem like they are a 'top 3%' themselves honestly.
In addition to all this, you will get a much lower rate than you're expecting. While it's true that you set your own rate, they basically told me if I don't charge at the same below-salary rates as the rest of the people on their network, they won't send business my way.
So huge waste of time on the interview, plus you'll make less than a salaried position for the advantage of sporadic work and no benefits. Stay away if you know what's good for you!