Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 2 semanas. Acudí a una entrevista en GitLab en jun 2016
Entrevista
The interview process was "easy" in the sense that it was stress-free. It was my first look into the asynchronous workflow adopted by GitLab, which was important to me as a prospective hire. I used calendly.com links provided to me by the interviewers to schedule interviews at times that suited us both.
After an initial screening call, which was a friendly introduction to the interview process, I was told there would be a technical interview. Roughly a week later (I unfortunately chose to apply when they were busy at a GitLab Summit), the technical interview was dealt with in a surprisingly comfortable one-on-one environment, in one session, and it was very similar to any other technical interview for a frontend position, but with a lot less pressure due to the friendly nature of the interviewers. I was then told I would have further interviews, but not necessarily that I had done poorly/well.
A few days after the technical interview, I continued a process of screening-style calls with other senior employees, a day or two in-between each call. These employees were from different teams each time and seemed to get more senior as the calls went on, but they all worked directly with the engineers that I would join. Beyond the technical interview, the calls were focused on my personal attributes, which I now know was an attempt to match their hires with their unique company culture and values. This ended with a one-on-one with the CEO which finalised the details of my offer and again was important to me as a prospective hire.
Preguntas de entrevista [3]
Pregunta 1
What can we change in GitLab as an organization to make it better, for example the hiring process or the handbook?
Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 2 meses. Acudí a una entrevista en GitLab en dic 2021
Entrevista
Their interview process as detailed in their handbook is accurate. You're connected with a recruiter. You do an initial screening interview discussing your skills and motivations, typical interview subjects.
You move on to a technical assessment where they give you a merge request to review (in this role, HTML, CSS, Vue) in your own time. Then, you meet and make the changes you suggested in a live coding session. It was very relaxed and the interviewers were very understanding even if I was a little nervous.
Their front end positions closed before they could find a spot for me. However, the recruiters made a big effort to connect and try to find a good place for me, and encouraged me to reach back out in the future. Their effort made it feel like they really valued my time and my skills. I really appreciated theirs!
Overall, incredibly professional and communicative.
Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 4 meses. Acudí a una entrevista en GitLab en mar 2020
Entrevista
First interview was a behavioral screening interview which was pretty standard.
For the technical interview I was given a small merge request to review with a few changes. There was maybe 30 lines of SCSS, 10 lines of Javascript, and 30 lines of html/haml. The instructions merely told me to look over the requirements and suggest some changes to the code, and to download the code and make sure I could run it locally. I saw a few style and performance issues but overall the MR appeared to adequately implement the changes suggested in the requirements. I left a comment with a few of the things I noticed.
At the interview, I showed the interviewer my comments with a few changes I had come up with. He immediately told me I hadn't left enough suggested changes in my comments. The interviewer seemed overall uninterested in what I had to say, even when I came up with some more suggestions of things that could be changed. He seemed eager to end the interview and ended the interview after only a few minutes. I didn't even get a chance to write one line of code.
I spent 4-5 hours preparing for this interview, reading over all the email and materials, setting up the dependencies, running the code locally, and went over the MR several times to try and find any changes to be made to help it more closely match the requirements. There really wasn't a lot to go off of and the code appeared to function correctly according to the requirements - it did what the requirements said it needed to do.
I set up a call with the recruiter to give feedback on my experience and she basically invalidated my feedback. When I told her that it wasn't clear to me that I would be coming up with everything to do during the interview on my own, and that the changes I suggested would be the only content in the interview, she told me that it was very clear in her opinion what had to be done during the interview in the email.
I got the sense that the position was no longer available, but that the staff wasn't being transparent with me about this and was giving me short shrift.
- EDIT
I received a polite email a few weeks later stating that the position was indeed no longer available. It's disappointing to have an experience like this at a company that boasts transparency as one of its core values. I would have preferred for the interviewers to tell me up front that the position was no longer available instead of wasting my time and acting like I had somehow failed the interview.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
What are the changes you suggested and how would you implement them?
Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 4 semanas. Acudí a una entrevista en GitLab en ene 2020
Entrevista
Everything would have been great if they didn't forget to inform me of the feedback to my last interview. I waited for 7 days and then sent an email, to which they answered quite quickly. So I was definitely forgotten by them, and it left a slightly negative impression on the overall process. Otherwise, I've met only nice people and had good time being interviewed by them.