Ask HN: What was your best interviewing experience like?
What did you like about it, and which company was it?
31 comments
Overall, the worst experiences I've had have been the three (or is it four?) failed google interviews
I've never applied to Google
But have interviewed there several times
The last time was for a cloud architect / customer onboarding presales enigneer role ... and (though they contacted me, with my resume in hand) they were upset I didn't already have GCP experience
The other times, though, I failed their tech screen because I asked clarifying questions and/or answered in a way that wasn't on the script
And the people who did the interviews were completely incapable of providing clarification, or understanding that what I told them was not only valid, but could also be superior to what they had on their script
I've never applied to Google
But have interviewed there several times
The last time was for a cloud architect / customer onboarding presales enigneer role ... and (though they contacted me, with my resume in hand) they were upset I didn't already have GCP experience
The other times, though, I failed their tech screen because I asked clarifying questions and/or answered in a way that wasn't on the script
And the people who did the interviews were completely incapable of providing clarification, or understanding that what I told them was not only valid, but could also be superior to what they had on their script
I was given access to the code base (old, quite bad code base), shown a smallish bug and asked to fix it. Was left alone. Took me half hour or so to fix it. They made an offer.
No stupid syntax questions. No dumb questions like “where do you see yourself in 5 years, what is your strength” etc. In fact, the only question they asked was how soon can I start, if they hired me.
Obviously this style won’t work in every case. But for that particular role, it was perfect. It also has the huge advantage to the interviewee, as he can see the code base for himself and decide if he really wants to work with it.
No stupid syntax questions. No dumb questions like “where do you see yourself in 5 years, what is your strength” etc. In fact, the only question they asked was how soon can I start, if they hired me.
Obviously this style won’t work in every case. But for that particular role, it was perfect. It also has the huge advantage to the interviewee, as he can see the code base for himself and decide if he really wants to work with it.
I had a "spot interview" with a boutique consultancy in Columbus OH a couple years ago at OLF
They had a snippet of C++ code, and were giving-out mugs to anyone who could find "the" bug in the code
I'm not a dev, don't even play on on TV, but I really "came of age" writing C++ back in the 90s
I spotted the other bug in the function on the paper - the one the guy who had written and printed it out hadn't noticed he'd added
He asked me if I want to come work for them as a QA/debug engineer - which I politely declined (the money was good, but didn't want to relo to central OH (having just recently moved already))
They had a snippet of C++ code, and were giving-out mugs to anyone who could find "the" bug in the code
I'm not a dev, don't even play on on TV, but I really "came of age" writing C++ back in the 90s
I spotted the other bug in the function on the paper - the one the guy who had written and printed it out hadn't noticed he'd added
He asked me if I want to come work for them as a QA/debug engineer - which I politely declined (the money was good, but didn't want to relo to central OH (having just recently moved already))
I've always had a strange interview experiences.
Straight out of university, failed the first one, they had a better candidate, but they called me a few weeks later and made a role for me. Was here for 18 month's.
Second one was odd, had flown to another city looking for an apartment and had several viewings booked, had applied to several jobs in the weeks beforehand and had several screener calls. Got a call a few minutes after landing, said I was in the city and could pop around for a face to face, had to navigate an unfamiliar city and transport system, arrived a few minutes late to interview. Had no recollection of the company and told them so, they had to remind me. Had my laptop with me and some files and was able to talk them through some work etc. Interview went well. On the way back to the station the phone me to come back and sign a contract. Was here for 4 years.
Third role, a friend recommended to their employer. At interview one of the recruiters was also working with another company and instead recommend me to that company. Several reschedules later due to flu on their and my end, had an interview and a small task, a week later had the they offered me the position. Was here for 4 years.
Fourth role, recruiter game me a call and I went along for the ride... screening calls were fine, interview had a few odd questions but was offered and still here 4 years later.
Straight out of university, failed the first one, they had a better candidate, but they called me a few weeks later and made a role for me. Was here for 18 month's.
Second one was odd, had flown to another city looking for an apartment and had several viewings booked, had applied to several jobs in the weeks beforehand and had several screener calls. Got a call a few minutes after landing, said I was in the city and could pop around for a face to face, had to navigate an unfamiliar city and transport system, arrived a few minutes late to interview. Had no recollection of the company and told them so, they had to remind me. Had my laptop with me and some files and was able to talk them through some work etc. Interview went well. On the way back to the station the phone me to come back and sign a contract. Was here for 4 years.
Third role, a friend recommended to their employer. At interview one of the recruiters was also working with another company and instead recommend me to that company. Several reschedules later due to flu on their and my end, had an interview and a small task, a week later had the they offered me the position. Was here for 4 years.
Fourth role, recruiter game me a call and I went along for the ride... screening calls were fine, interview had a few odd questions but was offered and still here 4 years later.
NetApp 2014.
After a phone interview with the hiring manager to confirm mutual interest, an on-site interview was arranged. 1 entire workday of interview.
The whole team worked towards interviewing their potential new team member. The first one in the morning gave a full tech view of what is going on and practically walked out without any evaluation. A good break, and then the second interviewer evaluates some theoretical aspects very much related to the job being hired for. Lovely conversation and learning out of it as well. Third team member walks in for a discussion about all the tech the first interviewer talked about in the morning. The goal was to see how much I grasped and how I could jump in to an existing environment, think and approach problem solving. Lovely tech discussion discussing merits of solutions proposed to hypothetical problems. The team welcomes me to join them for lunch. I was explicitly told it was informal and no evaluations of any kind and just a friendly lunch since everyone’s gotta eat and they’d hate for me to eat alone. Nice social lunch.
Post lunch, another engineer walks in with their laptop and says, “I’m working on this today.. how about we put up my display on projector and we work together on this for an hour?”. A nice times pair working scenario to test my skills and team playing abilities.
At the end of the day, even though I was tired, I was hoping to get an offer from them, and the manager says they liked everything and would leave the final word to HR, but they are going to pass on their OK to HR.
Worked there for four years until I needed to move geographically. Best job I ever had yet.
After a phone interview with the hiring manager to confirm mutual interest, an on-site interview was arranged. 1 entire workday of interview.
The whole team worked towards interviewing their potential new team member. The first one in the morning gave a full tech view of what is going on and practically walked out without any evaluation. A good break, and then the second interviewer evaluates some theoretical aspects very much related to the job being hired for. Lovely conversation and learning out of it as well. Third team member walks in for a discussion about all the tech the first interviewer talked about in the morning. The goal was to see how much I grasped and how I could jump in to an existing environment, think and approach problem solving. Lovely tech discussion discussing merits of solutions proposed to hypothetical problems. The team welcomes me to join them for lunch. I was explicitly told it was informal and no evaluations of any kind and just a friendly lunch since everyone’s gotta eat and they’d hate for me to eat alone. Nice social lunch.
Post lunch, another engineer walks in with their laptop and says, “I’m working on this today.. how about we put up my display on projector and we work together on this for an hour?”. A nice times pair working scenario to test my skills and team playing abilities.
At the end of the day, even though I was tired, I was hoping to get an offer from them, and the manager says they liked everything and would leave the final word to HR, but they are going to pass on their OK to HR.
Worked there for four years until I needed to move geographically. Best job I ever had yet.
really impressive, but i can't imagine the team doing this for more than 3 or 4 candidates on a given position.
They must have a strong prescreening step.
I like the type of interviews (even if I don't start working for that company afterwards) where they treat me like a human being. I don't mind even if there is a test that takes few hours.
I like when they are approachable, when they don't use generic questions, when they have actually read my CV and application letter, when they show their genuine interest in my skills.
I've been at numerus interviews where I had a feeling that they don't even know who am I and why did they call me.
I also like if there is more that one person that I'm talking to, like two or three of them (lets say - future team mate, future team lead, someone from HR).
I've learned a great deal from interviews: what are the trends, which technologies really are in demand, is there future in certain fields of IT, what do different company cultures look like, etc. This all has helped me to do a better screening of my next gigs. I've built a vision of what the perfect company looks like for me and what would make me feel conferrable.
I like when they are approachable, when they don't use generic questions, when they have actually read my CV and application letter, when they show their genuine interest in my skills.
I've been at numerus interviews where I had a feeling that they don't even know who am I and why did they call me.
I also like if there is more that one person that I'm talking to, like two or three of them (lets say - future team mate, future team lead, someone from HR).
I've learned a great deal from interviews: what are the trends, which technologies really are in demand, is there future in certain fields of IT, what do different company cultures look like, etc. This all has helped me to do a better screening of my next gigs. I've built a vision of what the perfect company looks like for me and what would make me feel conferrable.
Scaleway was interesting. It had some classic technical whiteboard interviews but the difficulty and the topics did seem appropriate. It also included an escape game with some other candidates interviewed on the same day. The HR was watching us through the cameras. It is hell, but I kinda enjoyed it. We also got offers even though we didn’t manage to escape. The offices were very weird, some kind of old luxury hotel in the centre of Paris, but with strange decorations. For example the salary negotiation was done in some kind of white cocoon meeting room with a table of white fur from memory. I enjoyed the walls full of motherboards and the design of some rooms. Never seen anything like this since. They moved to another building since my visit though.
We had cheese fondue at lunch and while I got an offer I didn’t work for them after all so I have a positive memory of this experience.
We had cheese fondue at lunch and while I got an offer I didn’t work for them after all so I have a positive memory of this experience.
Google (pre-pandemic). Awesome trip to Bay area. Very interesting interview - in a room with a white board covering entire wall. Mostly coding but also talking about algorithms, data structures, and concurrency. Met some great engineers. Unfortunately had to decline the offer due to family matters.
My current position. First there was a phone interview of about 45 minutes, IIRC. Then an in-person interview that lasted 2 hours.
The first 30 minutes was general questions. Background, work history, that kind of stuff. A bit of "get to know you" kind of stuff stuff - hobbies or whatever.
The next 30 minutes was, here's this half page of code. It's one function. It's not especially tricky. The function is named "foo" or something like that. What does it do? What inputs does it expect? What should it be named? What can go wrong in the function? What will happen if it does?
The next 30 minutes was a little coding problem. It wasn't leetcode - you didn't have to "know the trick" to be able to get it. You could use any language you wanted. (I used perl because it did a bunch of the details for me.) If you had a bug, they'd ask questions until you realized it.
The last 30 minutes was a design question. How would you design your software for this situation? It was a pretty open-ended situation, so no matter what you did, they could throw some additional details at you and see how you evolved your design in response.
At the end of it, they knew: Can we work with this person? Can they read code? Can they write code? Can they design code?
The first 30 minutes was general questions. Background, work history, that kind of stuff. A bit of "get to know you" kind of stuff stuff - hobbies or whatever.
The next 30 minutes was, here's this half page of code. It's one function. It's not especially tricky. The function is named "foo" or something like that. What does it do? What inputs does it expect? What should it be named? What can go wrong in the function? What will happen if it does?
The next 30 minutes was a little coding problem. It wasn't leetcode - you didn't have to "know the trick" to be able to get it. You could use any language you wanted. (I used perl because it did a bunch of the details for me.) If you had a bug, they'd ask questions until you realized it.
The last 30 minutes was a design question. How would you design your software for this situation? It was a pretty open-ended situation, so no matter what you did, they could throw some additional details at you and see how you evolved your design in response.
At the end of it, they knew: Can we work with this person? Can they read code? Can they write code? Can they design code?
My favorite was Posthogs, it was an all-day onsite where they stuck me in a slack chat, had me code a full-stack python app, and then paid me $900 for it. Awesome.
Looks terrific. Also their website is carefully crafted and have a compensation calculator.
Ellie, the head recruiter is fantastic and their external kb is really innovative. Check out the design on the website, it's so good haha
As for pay, I got an offer and though I didn't go with them, it's very very good, with a ton of perks that I didn't get with prev companies.
Tradeoff is that they'll probably expect you to work hard.
As for pay, I got an offer and though I didn't go with them, it's very very good, with a ton of perks that I didn't get with prev companies.
Tradeoff is that they'll probably expect you to work hard.
Yeah, but they dock your pay 30-35% for living outside a few select tech hubs. While I understand how such a thing made sense in the past, and could even understand a small difference, I think we're past the point where a 35% difference is fair.
To me, "docking one's pay" implies some sort of action to pay less than previously agreed. Is that what you mean?
As a developer that works in many different languages, frameworks, and libraries, I care fuck all about trying to memorize exact syntax and function names between so many different systems anymore.
From my perspective, the least illuminating interviews try and focus on language gotchas and memorization. In the real world, you have syntax highlighting and Google and Stackoverflow to lookup function names and minor syntax differences between many different technologies.
For me, the most illuminating types of interviews are conversations that focus on a smart approach to problem solving. You give somebody a general technical problem and a smart candidate would ask some intelligent clarifying questions about why it needs to be built, its usage, security, performance, costs, design and user-experience, etc. Then they give you a higher-level overview of what's involved in actually building it, testing it, and maintaining. The point isn't that they give you an exact answer that you were looking for, it's that they understand the right approach to creating systems.
From my perspective, the least illuminating interviews try and focus on language gotchas and memorization. In the real world, you have syntax highlighting and Google and Stackoverflow to lookup function names and minor syntax differences between many different technologies.
For me, the most illuminating types of interviews are conversations that focus on a smart approach to problem solving. You give somebody a general technical problem and a smart candidate would ask some intelligent clarifying questions about why it needs to be built, its usage, security, performance, costs, design and user-experience, etc. Then they give you a higher-level overview of what's involved in actually building it, testing it, and maintaining. The point isn't that they give you an exact answer that you were looking for, it's that they understand the right approach to creating systems.
My current position’s interview went exactly as you described in the latter half of your comment. Sometime later after I was hired I asked why I wasn’t really thoroughly whiteboarded. My boss replied, “All I needed to know was that you had critical thinking skills and that you could solve problems. I was whiteboarded and I hated it. I remember walking away from the experience feeling like it said nothing about me,” and there was scarcely a single question he had asked me during the interview that I could give him a straightforward answer to. Almost every answer I gave him began with or included some version of, “Well, it depends. What about x?”
I recently had an interview with big hardware company! I enjoyed every single moment out of it. It was the first interview that challenged me in a fun way! It reflected my weakness and strength. I was able to show how general I was!
It was a great experience interviewing for that company. They didn't even bother with leetcode thing! Everything was organic and natural!
It was a great experience interviewing for that company. They didn't even bother with leetcode thing! Everything was organic and natural!
That sounds nice but what did they actually do? I’m very curious about the specifics of the process
They asked the fundamentals that is necessary in the field. I applied for junior role and most of the junior role ask for leetcoding. But here, I was asked the concepts and understanding of the domain! Very rare to have such interviews...
The best interview experiences I ever had have come down to three related (but different) categories:
1) we've already heard good things about you - are you sure you want to work here doing this?
2) [politely (and correctly)] arguing against the tech interviewer's wrong answer, and being congratulated/thanked by the interviewer who made the error (when he figures out I was correct)
3) answering what the interviewer intended to be a tech question with a business answer (temporarily (or permanently) flummoxing the interviewer)
4) everything was great ... but something about either personality or another candidate made someone else win-out for the role
Did I get the job every time? No. Does that make the interview process that fell into one of these three categories bad? Again, no.
I had the first situation happen 4 times - about 18, 11, 7, and 3 years ago - asked the hiring manager if they were going to do a tech screen/interview, and he told me, "no <Name> works here, and told me you know more about X than they do" or "<Person> told me you're smart and capable - you want to start Monday?".
I had the second one happen (the first time) 15 years ago over a mildly-esoteric (but simultaneously vital) aspect of C function argument parsing. It was a polite exchange, but I stood my ground on my answer, contradicting the guy who asked the question. I got the job offer, and the day I started, he came up and said, "I read the C spec. You were right. Thanks."
I had the third happen a couple times, but most memorably about 7 years ago (and didn't get the job, btw) interviewing with Amazon. The interviewer was completely nonplussed I didn't answer his "clever" tech question in a tech manner. However, limiting the range of acceptable answers to "tech" meant they were nerfing their list of possible hires dramatically
And I've had the last happen many times - at Red Hat, Fog Creek, Zenoss, Rackspace, Puppet Labs, and others. All you can realistically hope to do when interviewing is to do your best - but the decision to make an offer (or not) ultimately comes down to the potential employer. Three of those specifically-named companies paid for my travel to come to interview (an immediate plus, ftr). The interviews at all went absolutely as well as I could have done. But it was not in the cards to play out that I work for any of them.
1) we've already heard good things about you - are you sure you want to work here doing this?
2) [politely (and correctly)] arguing against the tech interviewer's wrong answer, and being congratulated/thanked by the interviewer who made the error (when he figures out I was correct)
3) answering what the interviewer intended to be a tech question with a business answer (temporarily (or permanently) flummoxing the interviewer)
4) everything was great ... but something about either personality or another candidate made someone else win-out for the role
Did I get the job every time? No. Does that make the interview process that fell into one of these three categories bad? Again, no.
I had the first situation happen 4 times - about 18, 11, 7, and 3 years ago - asked the hiring manager if they were going to do a tech screen/interview, and he told me, "no <Name> works here, and told me you know more about X than they do" or "<Person> told me you're smart and capable - you want to start Monday?".
I had the second one happen (the first time) 15 years ago over a mildly-esoteric (but simultaneously vital) aspect of C function argument parsing. It was a polite exchange, but I stood my ground on my answer, contradicting the guy who asked the question. I got the job offer, and the day I started, he came up and said, "I read the C spec. You were right. Thanks."
I had the third happen a couple times, but most memorably about 7 years ago (and didn't get the job, btw) interviewing with Amazon. The interviewer was completely nonplussed I didn't answer his "clever" tech question in a tech manner. However, limiting the range of acceptable answers to "tech" meant they were nerfing their list of possible hires dramatically
And I've had the last happen many times - at Red Hat, Fog Creek, Zenoss, Rackspace, Puppet Labs, and others. All you can realistically hope to do when interviewing is to do your best - but the decision to make an offer (or not) ultimately comes down to the potential employer. Three of those specifically-named companies paid for my travel to come to interview (an immediate plus, ftr). The interviews at all went absolutely as well as I could have done. But it was not in the cards to play out that I work for any of them.
The guy was a director-level and had been a software engineer. I had just been fired/laid-off from my last job for not faking results, so I walked in and gave him an updated resume. He asked what happened and I said they pressed me to do some things with the data that I wasn’t comfortable with. He was like “been there.” And we moved on to the interview.
He asked me to talk about some projects I’ve worked on, he asked me to white-board a recursive factorial function, asked why I wanted to work there and why I wanted to work in defense. He gave me a quick tour and sold me on the benefits.
No crazy mind-teasers, no ridiculous culture fit crap, just a good conservation where I could show that I had the skills for the job I was interviewing for
He asked me to talk about some projects I’ve worked on, he asked me to white-board a recursive factorial function, asked why I wanted to work there and why I wanted to work in defense. He gave me a quick tour and sold me on the benefits.
No crazy mind-teasers, no ridiculous culture fit crap, just a good conservation where I could show that I had the skills for the job I was interviewing for
Best interview experience consisted of these things:
- the choice of video or audio only calls (I did audio only interviews for my current job and was hired. We didn’t do video until the congratulations call)
- the openness to ask additional questions via email
- the openness to let me answer interview questions via email for things that I couldn’t think of on the spot
- a short project via email
- answering more work related questions via email and leaving the interview for more of a getting to know you thing
- a conversation format where the interviewer contributes to the conversation
- exact dates of when to hear back
- a short profile of who you will be talking to
- a summary of what the interview will be about, and what kind of questions will be asked
- the choice of video or audio only calls (I did audio only interviews for my current job and was hired. We didn’t do video until the congratulations call)
- the openness to ask additional questions via email
- the openness to let me answer interview questions via email for things that I couldn’t think of on the spot
- a short project via email
- answering more work related questions via email and leaving the interview for more of a getting to know you thing
- a conversation format where the interviewer contributes to the conversation
- exact dates of when to hear back
- a short profile of who you will be talking to
- a summary of what the interview will be about, and what kind of questions will be asked
My best interview was with a foundation when we were fundraising for our green energy startup. We were looking to raise $1.5M and they had conducted their DD. On the call the person in charge said: " If you can do X with $1.5M how much more can you do with $3M?" That's what we ended up with.
AWS - Preparing for the Loop caused me to really focus on where I had been in my career and fully understand that path and what I could bring forward to AWS. I think even if I was not offered a position with AWS it was great preparation for interviewing with other companies.
best interviews are the ones that offered me a position
ProtonMail. After applying for a 90k CHF Zurich SRE role, and seemingly ending second in their week-long IaC take home assignment on building a virtualised DC from scratch with KVM and CentOS, they offered me another role in Czech Republic for around 35k USD.
On a contrary note, I'll just leave this here: https://www.hexbear.net/post/131647
I work at Canonical and am embarrassed by our interview process.
I work at Canonical and am embarrassed by our interview process.
Google 2007. Fly to SFO from BWI get rental car. Spend 6 hours at Google HQ. Great time talking shop with other engineers with amazing lunch in the middle. Very fun , energetic time
My last two interviews were just chatting a while. I also showed some code (of a personal project) from my laptop at the other interview. Both companies offered a job.