Me postulé a través de una agencia de empleos. El proceso tomó 7 semanas. Acudí a una entrevista en Roblox (San Mateo, CA) en feb 2020
Entrevista
Few months before a person from a recruiting agency contacted me for a senior software engineering role and he thought my background matches really well. He discussed my resume and current compensation/current offer. After known all those, he mentioned that Roblox is very competitive and would be great for my future. I do not interview regularly and was not active during this time.
Almost a month after, I was contacted by a recruiter for a 1:1 with two hiring managers. I had two 1 hour interviews with the hiring managers separately. They sounded to me very positive (I may be wrong). I was told by both of them that there will be a technical test/phone-screen interview for both of the teams. The recruiter said that I can interview for both the teams. In less than a week since the first interview, I was contacted by the recruiter that there will be only one take-home test and no other phone-screen for both the teams. They will arrange an onsite with both the teams and try to wrap up the interviews on one day.
I finished the take-home test within 2 days and 3 days before the deadline. The test was relatively easy and interesting. There were several open-ended questions; I answered them all but wanted to discuss those in detail when the response comes back.
One week went by without any response and I had a pending offer to decide. I asked the recruiter for a response and he responded to me in a few days with an onsite interview call. I was rather curious about the interview questions and wanted to discuss the outcome; unfortunately, I wasn't entertained. I thought of discussing it during the interview. By this time I cleared by choice of the position I am interviewing for. Any background mismatch decision could have saved both of our times.
The interview was scheduled in 2 weeks' time and was based on my preference. I was interviewed by 6 persons and one lunch session. The first session was pretty good where I was explaining about my research and work background. The interviewer was really nice and said had very little knowledge about my area. It was mostly me explaining about the topic with occasional relevant questions. The second interviewer asked a programming question. He was a tech lead level person and was in a different role than the first one. The surprisingly easy question than the role I was interviewed for. Finished fast! The interviewer said you are too quick on solving the problem, which area you want to work? I expressed my choice. I felt the interviewer had predetermined his stance. 45 Min interview finished in 20mins and I was asked to browse the internet till lunch. Surprising! Post lunch, the 3rd interview was smooth too. The interviewer was a nice and knowledgeable guy. We had an excellent discussion on a certain topic, not really an interview though. At the end of the interview, I started feeling weird, it a too smooth interview experience for the kind of a role I was trying to get. The next interview was the hiring manager and it was an excellent conversation as well. This was a proper interview and several algorithmic questions were asked. I thought I did pretty well. I was asked for the solution rather than code. I did code to some extent though. I was expecting to discuss the take-home test but time went by pretty fast and the next interviewer was there. The next one was a programming question, again very easy for the kind of role I was interviewed for. I did code too some extent and almost finished it. He was a nice person to talk to as well. The last round was a bit weird; all simple C++ questions and super simple stuff. There was no algorithmic question. After a while he allowed me to ask a question and I asked several questions including the social aspect of the product. He answered those all and it took a while but didn't kill the entire time. Once he realized that he again started asking me a new set of C++ questions. I felt like a lack of care for the position that he was interviewing for and definitely not prepared. A kind of passive compulsion (from within the hiring team) was evident during the entire process was present. (continue reading in the interview question section)
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
Post-interview, I talked to the interviewer about my current offer and he was kind of shocked. He said it would be hard to match. Because their package breakdown is base + stock; absolutely nothing else!
Next week I got a response from the staffing agency. It was a rejection without feedback. I reached out to the internal recruiter and he was kind enough to talk to me.
Synopsys of the discussion was that my background and the role require does not match. I was utterly surprised. I took so long and a full day waster for the interviewee and the team to find that the position does not match. I think as I was a local interviewee, they asked me for an onsite and I was rejected even before. I really wanted to save both of our time and energy.
My advice to any interviewee at the company would be: unless you have lots of time to spare and energy to spare, please communicate about your choice and learn more about their requirement before wasting your PTO, energy and moral.
Reach out by recruiter, set up phone screen interview. 60 min coding interview. A leetcode style question with 3 follow up , overall experience is good got reject 2 weeks afterward.
The phone screen was surprisingly technical and lasted about 45 minutes, diving straight into system design. I was asked to design a leaderboard service, which caught me off guard at first. But as I started to outline my approach, I realized it was similar to a challenge I’d practiced on prachub.com just days before. The subsequent technical rounds were intense, focusing on DSA problems and scalability issues. In the end, I got an offer that I happily accepted, despite the difficulties I faced throughout the process.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
Design a leaderboard service that supports tens of millions of concurrent players. Cover top-K queries, neighbor-rank queries, partial sharding, and consistency tradeoffs.
Reached out by HR and chatted with a hiring manager. Mostly Behavioral questions such as why you want to work at roblox. The conversation was great and smooth. But they rejected me after a few days.