Any time that you have a five hour interview with no break, and an interviewer drops an f-bomb in an interview, it's bad times. Some of the questions weren't on-target, either, but rather asked me to code something that I wouldn't ever do in real life. Didn't feel like working there would do anything for me personally or my career.
2
Accepted offer
Positive experience
Average interview
Application
I applied online. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Glassdoor (Mill Valley, CA) in Oct 2015
Interview
It was a typical interview with 2 phone interviews one was with director of engineering and involved algorithms and data structures. It was followed by an on site interview with a mix of developers and product manager, director and VP of development group. Interview questions were related to web development, past experiences, problem solving and estimation.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Algorithm to check if a character is present in an array of strings and return the string
The process kicked off with an e-mail asking to set up a technical phone screen. I was extremely excited to speak with Glassdoor as they were one of my top companies I was pursuing.
The phone call was scheduled for mid day. I received the call nearly 40 minutes past the time we agreed on (I had given up on the phone call by that point). The interview was off to a rough start.
We spoke about my background for 10 minutes and then dove right into the technical part. What I wasn't prepared for was what was to come next. I've had many technical interviews on the past. I enjoy them. I look forward to them because it's an engineer's time to shine.
For the next 35 minutes straight I was bombarded with question after question about the most intricate parts of css and html. Things like list out every possible unit of measure in css. List out every single html5 bracket. Define for me semantic html.
For 35 minutes straight and without a second gap in between I was bombarded. By the end of the interview I was so off balance from what had just happened. I could hear she wasn't pleased on the phone. I apologized for being a bit frazzled and reiterated my excitement for the opportunity at Glassdoor.
I hung up the phone and took a minute to think about what had just happened and realized... I just spent 45 minutes talking to this woman and she literally has no idea whether or not I can code. What I was quizzed on was my ability to regurgitate information from MDN. If this woman has been allowed to head up the interview process for any significant time I can't even imagine how many talented engineers have been screened out of the interview funnel because they don't remember that a pica is a unit of measurement in CSS.
Having not heard anything for a week after the phone screen I didn't have high hopes but I still sent an extremely enthusiastic e-mail thanking this woman for her time and explaining that I was beyond excited about the position. I also apologized for being caught a little off guard with a few of the questions as I prepped for a different interpretation of the job.
I received a canned e-mail about 3 minutes after my e-mail was sent rejecting me.
I cannot even express in words how put off I was by this process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
List and describe every unit of measurement in CSS.