I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Zynga (San Francisco, CA) in Aug 2014
Interview
I applied through a recruiter. I was invited for a phone screen. The phone screen was done by a principal engineer. He was friendly. He asked me some basic C++ questions like vf tables, static_cast, dynamic_cast, reinterpret_case and dynamic cast and a little about my mentoring skills. The next day I got an email for an onsite. The onsite was with 2 directors, 1 architect and a VP, all senior folks since I am 10+ years experiences. Only one interview was on coding. He asked me how to do in order traversal without recursion. 2 of them were mainly on my design, debugging and architectural skills and one on my personality like what I like to work and what I am looking in my next job. Everything went well and I got an offer.
I was interviewed for a principal engineer role, but when they made me the offer they hired me at Senior Software Engineer level. This is a little mysterious. They are very generous in terms of perks.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1) Different types of casts in C++
2) In order traversal without recursion
3) If an iphone app crashes often how will you debug
4) Design for gameboard leaders for a game in zynga
5) Design chess game and scale it
6) Design for C compiler (since I mentioned it on my resume)
1st Round DSA - I applied through LinkedIn, got call from HR team and interview round was scheduled. It was virtual round. 1 question of medium difficulty level was asked.
Interviewed for the role that was meant to be on client side using Unity. When it came to the technical interview, none of the questions asked were on interview experience. Mostly algorithm and C#
Old school. Teams consisting of same ethnicity and intend to hire same with no diversity in practice. No directions. Positions getting cancelled often. Waste of time for everyone. Pay has reduced over time.