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      Software Engineering Manager Interview

      24 Apr 2025
      Anonymous interview candidate
      San Francisco, CA
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Philo (San Francisco, CA)

      Interview

      After a great conversation with a recruiter, I spoke with the hiring manager, and both interviews went well. Lots of good signals about culture and what work is like day to day. Then came the technical. Other people on Glassdoor complaining about the complexity of this exercise are not exaggerating. You are told that about four hours is reasonable, and then they send you a project description that is FIFTEEN PARAGRAPHS LONG. Everything else in the interview process is going so well that you push yourself extra hard to nail this. Ultimately, this is the kind of project that a high level college course would allot several weeks for. It is also the same project regardless of what your engineering specialization is. At any rate, I spent about 60 hours on this stupid project and sent it in in a mostly working state. I was pleased to move on to the onsite phase, after all that time and effort. The onsite is completely reasonable, further making the takehome exercise stand out like a sore thumb. After the onsite, despite the recruiter keeping in touch throughout the weeks of interviewing, everything went silent. I was completely ghosted. After everyone seemed so kind and empathetic, and after spending so much time on their completely absurd technical, this was especially devastating. I guess ultimately I dodged a bullet, if this is any indication of how they treat people. Stay far away from these people. They appear sane but are anything but.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      From the ground up, implement a concurrent server with a bespoke TCP-like protocol that manages a fixed-capacity LIFO data structure. The server supports asynchronous push operations, which append variable-length payloads to the stack, with blocking semantics when the stack is full. It also supports asynchronous pop operations, which retrieve the top element, returning a length-prefixed payload, and block when the stack is empty. Request processing must adhere to the order of complete reception. Edge case requirements are also provided. A given test suite and an additional secret test suite validate your work. The test suite is inconsistent with the specifications, so that's also fun. Do all of this in four hours, and do feel free to write extra tests because you'll definitely have extra time. If you're a frontend developer by trade, have fun working entirely outside your wheel house!
      Answer question
      5