Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 3 días. Acudí a una entrevista en Gusto (Vancouver, BC) en feb 2019
Entrevista
2 coding rounds on phone via code share. then full day hangouts interview scheduled.
Feedback I received from Gusto: She was pretty quiet in some areas of the paired programming interview. She looked to solve the big problem instead of tackling some of the smaller ones. She wrote a decent amount of code without running any tests until urged to.
Before appearing for the interview, I had multiple mocks with an Amazon SDE2 and an SDE3. I was clearly told that I should approach a problem top down.
Smaller problems which you know are easy to solve should be tackled later. Always work backward after drawing the bigger picture. SDE3 told me that he never expects any candidate to run the tests in between coding. Rather it would be a red flag for him. Maybe Gusto follows TDD? If yes, I should have paid attention to that.
For what it's worth, I wasn't quiet because I am in the habit of thinking out loud. I never ever go quiet for more than 5 minutes which is totally justified if I want to do my own thinking. In the last round though, interviewer himself seemed a bit disinterested. His hand on his cheek, dropping down body posture, so I got an impression that he just wanted me to write the code. I explained my entire approach before moving forward with the coding. I added so many comments on each method. Again, something I learned in the mocks.
But I completely understand and respect that companies have different ways of working. But honestly, I am confused now because both the opinions from experienced interviewers are poles apart.
Preguntas de entrevista [4]
Pregunta 1
char[][] board = c4.parseBoard("9_r4_brbrbr_3b2rb_b2r2br_r2b3rb");
Convert this in a 2D array with 9 spaces, r, 4 spaces, b, r, b, r, b, r, 1space..and so on
given x amount of money and y amount of people, split the money equally. Right question to ask was what if the money can not be evenly distributed and certain other edge cases.
7 interviews, too long process. Unfair evaluation with biased interviewers. On one of the interviews, interviewer made a mistake but insisted heavily on it. Might be a loss of time since the salary offered was also average.
Acudí a una entrevista en Gusto (San Francisco, CA)
Entrevista
Overall I would give this a 'meh' in terms or interview. And I have done a number over my 10+ years of industry exp (and have worked at few places of this size). The process is long and you will get 'strung along' for sure. I will preface this with 'everybody I spoke with was nice'. The HR person was quite nice and accommodating. The hiring manager was also nice, but spoke very fast and kind of danced around the 'what would I do in this role' or the 'what would my day to day be like'. The whole process has a lot of rounds. To the point where I think they think they are a faang or some AI hype type company. I had multiple pre-onsite rounds. Then an onsite that I think was 4 to 5 rounds (I forget, it has been a few months...). The 'tech' questions and the 'system design' questions was quite generic and easy actually. To the point where we did not dig into anything 'meaty' at all. It was almost like the questions were meant to be more to a junior level person. I guess studying for leet code and tons of practical stuff was not ideal. I think I did fine on all the questions. They ended up not giving me an offer, but it took them a long time (I think 2.5 weeks) to give me a no, after a number of 'everybody loved you' type messages. I felt very strung along.
They also have some 'values' interview. Honestly I think this is where I failed. It seems like it is more like 'does the hr person like you'.
I had some 'red flags' for sure. Any message I had sent to the potential hiring manager or HR was ignored. There was not 1 part of the interview that actually determined how I would fit into this role. There was no direct questions on the domain itself for the role. There was no SQL or performance/scaling questions. There was no trouble shooting questions. I could not get a single answer of what I would do in this role. At all.
I did get the vibe that engineering was kind of a second class citizen in the org. Which makes sense. But it also seems like the org moves very very slow and this was apparently in each interviewer telling me as such.
I get the feel they are looking for 'bigger company' type people who are more interested in planning vs doing.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
The tech questions are fairly generic. Nothing that would not be seen in other reviews. I would make sure you have knowledge of hash maps/nested hash maps and some leet code easy problems. The questions are actually so easy you might trip yourself up.
It’s a long process that can be shortened to four, or at most five, interviews by combining some steps. However, they’re flexible with scheduling, so I was able to complete all interviews within 15 days. All the interviewers were kind and supportive throughout
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
Did you have any impact on codebase that effects not your team but whole company?