I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Gro Intelligence in Feb 2022
Interview
Contacted by recruiter on LinkedIn. After initial chat with recruiter:
1. Intro discussion with CTO to gauge interest and ask tech questions.
2. Two coding interviews, medium level Leetcode problems, in your language of choice.
3. "Troubleshooting" interview and system design interview. Must pass coding interviews to get here.
4. Final discussion with CTO.
Very positive experience. Flexible with scheduling. Was nice to meet CTO up front and then again at the end of the process. Recruiter was very responsive with almost immediate feedback after each round. All interviewers were pleasant to talk to, and enthusiasm for company was very apparent.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Coding: Medium-level Leetcode DSA questions. These were true mediums, not hards pretending to be mediums.
They use an online editor that can't run code, but one interviewer asked me to run my code locally and screenshare it, so be prepared for that.
Troubleshooting: Some Linux questions, then given general description of a problem walk through how you might solve it (each relevant suggestion you offer reveals more info). This is open-ended, I came close to solving it but didn't quite get there. Real-world troubleshooting experience will prepare you for this.
System design: Asked to design a specific feature of a well-known mobile application with a backend at global scale.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Gro Intelligence in Jun 2022
Interview
The process was very fast and the in-house recruiter is very responsive and communicative.
The interview process starts with a phone screen with the recruiter. Next is an interview with the CTO. We discussed my experience, the overall architecture at Gro, and what I'm most interested in. Be aware that they are currently growing, so there are quite a lot of opportunities.
After the CTO come the technical interviews. 2 separate coding interviews. One was basic algorithm leetcode-type stuff, the other build a very simple text-based game. Not really sure why needed two as one seems like it would have sufficed. After getting past the coding interviews, there were system design and troubleshooting interviews. System design was to build a feature into an application with global reach. Troubleshooting was basics of memory, threading, caches, and latency (think p99). There's probably an additional one or two interviews beyond these, but this is where I stopped.
Generally, interviewers seemed more interested in the types of problems that can be studied/prepared for rather than my actual experience. If you grind leetcode for a few weeks and watch some practice design interviews on youtube, that should more make up for any lack of real-world experience.
Interview questions [6]
Question 1
Implement an algorithm to find the square root of a number. How do you make it more efficient.
If Martians existed and had to request data from Earth, how could we reduce latency of requests. If we still see high or slightly higher p99s, what might be the cause?
With a very simple incrementing variable, what happens when we add threads to the program? How can we ensure things work correctly? After being shown any number of naive approaches to locking, which ones would work?
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Gro Intelligence in Mar 2022
Interview
Pretty standard:
- 2 coding: one medium difficulty from leetcode and one to design a class based on some requirements.
- 1 design
- 1 troubleshooting: programming fundamental questions (locks, mutex, memory...)
- project talk
