Oh hey, Lutron! I interviewed there coming out of college, some 10 years ago. I think I drove down from Rochester, iirc. Of all the places I interviewed at the time, it's one of the only ones where I remember a specific interviewing session because it was somewhat unique:

The interview sat across from me and role-played a customer calling to complain about a vague issue happening in their home. I then had to roleplay asking the customer and various internal teams (all played by the interviewer) questions, forming hypotheses, running imaginary tests (the interviewer would tell me the outcome), and so on. I started from "The lights in this room don't work right", then clarified and trouble-shot through to the underlying issue, and finally to a root cause.

At the time it seemed super weird, but looking back on it years later, it was a clear exercise in troubleshooting skill - something that remains invaluable in engineering. It's one of the only times before or since that I can recall being tested on that specifically, even though it comes up all the time in my day-to-day job.

From what you describe, this challenges sounds like that was emblematic of the culture there. :)

Back-in-the-day (2006-era), that was how Microsoft would interview people for their Premier Field Engineer (PFE) role within the Support division. For customers where telephone/remote support couldn't resolve the issue, PFE's would be sent on-site to troubleshoot. (As well as do advisory and training engagements).

Also - typically, no matter where the potential job would be physically located, there would be at least one interview where you had to get on a plane and travel to complete - it weeded-out anyone who wasn't willing to actually travel for a role that required 70%+ time on-the-road.

If you accepted the position, there was a multi-week bootcamp - that would also include a week of paired shadowing telephone support calls.

That's how I interview for some roles! I don't work for Lutron though.

I hope they sent you a tin of Lutron cookies!

As a customer I can say Lutron engineers totally engaged with me over a home assistant bug and helped get it fixed.

> long standing tradition that engineers put in some time on the customer support phones

Before this, the tradition at engineering companies was that the "kids fresh out of school" would start in Manufacturing or Service so they'd have some experience with the difference between design engineering and actually being able to build or repair the thing you designed.

It seems that this doesn't happen much anymore.

For a company that sells a product, understanding customers is really important, so it makes sense to have new employees spend time in customer support. There is no faster way to understand what you should be building. The only problem I have with it is thinking of exposure to customers as a hazing ritual that ends after a certain point, after which you never have to deal with them for the rest of your career. This should probably be on a rotation!

Not only did I answer the phones but I haphazardly volunteered to help out for a shift at the local factory. I spent a shift Christmas Eve (with tinny music over the PA) crimping wires to a transformer. At the end of the shift they explained that they didn't need that work done but they didn't like they the large wire had to be crimped to a medium wire before being crimped to a small wire. This was a step that usually had to be done once per panel one or twice per day (large commercial orders) but they had me, guy who had been there for six months, crimp a couple hundred of them as a lesson to management. Well I learned that lesson and to this day I don't waste ANYONE'S time. No matter what.