The interview process involved a call with the recruiter, who was friendly and helpful. The next step was a 1 hr call with the hiring manager, followed by a take home project. If you pass that, you go on and do a project review, then a final interview with a couple of folks lasting probably 3 hours.
One thing to note. On the take home project I wrote over 1500 lines of code with 2 pages worth of documentation in 3 days and got rejected. Their standards are unrealistic - they expected it to be production ready with no mistakes, full test coverage (both unit and integration), error handling, and with full documentation. I had all of these and they were nitpicky. Most of us have lives, and I would NEVER ask 1 engineer without a code review to write that much code in 3 days and expect it to be nothing more than a prototype, let alone production-ready. They didn't even have the decency to listen to my reasoning as to why I made certain decisions during development, and what I decided to focus my limited time on.
Preguntas de entrevista [1]
Pregunta 1
Typical stuff, like your experiences, projects etc.
Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 4 semanas. Acudí a una entrevista en Smartcar
Entrevista
The interview process was very lengthy and had 5 steps:
- Recruiter Call
- Technical Screening w/ Manager
- Take-home Project
- Take-home Project Review
- 5 round Interview Loop
Overall, I really enjoyed everyone I worked with during the interview process! My recruiter was very helpful and every engineer I interviewed with was personable and talented. Definitely people I would've enjoyed having as co-workers.
Smartcar is great about communicating what each step of the process is and what the expectations are. They're also very prompt about getting back to you with feedback + results of each round. I also enjoyed that each technical round was practical and related to the job you'd be doing.
Despite these upsides, I think their interview process is way too long. The take-home project is non-trivial and there's 9 distinct interview rounds (including each step of the interview loop). That's a large time investment, especially if you're already working a full-time job + have a family.
Even most tech giants don't have such a long recruitment process, and their compensation/benefits are significantly higher.
Ultimately, I had a positive experience and Smartcar seems like a great place to work! However, their interview process needs to be streamlined.
Me postulé en línea. El proceso tomó 1 día. Acudí a una entrevista en Smartcar (Mountain View, CA) en sep 2024
Entrevista
I made initial contact with the recruiter to express my interest in the role and submitted my resume for review. After careful consideration, they decided not to proceed with my application.
