This was my experience trying to join Toptal

I am a freelancer. Was working as freelancer on elance before it merged. The resulting upwork is a joke as its a site for low balling. I came across Toptal, felt hopeful, applied as a developer. Interview had 4 rounds.

Round 1 Passed the language/communication check.

Round 2 Failed codility test 1st time. Had to solve 3 questions in 90 minutes. Its tough. Tried again after a month. Solved the 3 questions in 60 minutes as a result of some practicing.

Round 3 Live coding while screen sharing with a "toptaller". I have read this round would be easier than codility. Guess I was wrong. The problem I needed to solve was to find the number of cyclic primes with in a range N. If N = 100, there are 13 cyclic primes. (97 and 79 are primes so both would count as cyclic prime) I panicked for a minute as the question didn't seem that easy. Then I started coding. I used sieve to find prime numbers quickly. But while I was trying to find cyclic numbers, I ran out of time. The interviewer let me know time was up and then commented, I didn't make it and that if I used sieve, I might be able to do it. I showed him that I actually used sieve. After the interviewer disconnected, I took another 10 minuted to solve it (of that for 5 minutes, I was worrying as I lost it). The interviewer then mailed that I would be able to take the test again in 3 months! I decided I don't want to join Toptal. I am going to complete what I was building. For money, I'll have to join some company. I could still build while working full time.