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Software Engineer Interview Experience - San Jose, California

October 1, 2015
Neutral ExperienceGot Offer

Process

I got my interview through a resume drop at my university's CS career fair. (For reference, my university is a top 20 CS school and top 50 overall).

The first part of the process was a phone screen, and it was also where my apprehension began with the position I was interviewing for. The screen lasted about 25 minutes and was majority behavioral (what would you do in this situation, past projects, etc.). The closest thing I had gotten to a technical question was an open-ended question about writing a function that returns 1 given 0 and 0 given 1 (multiple solutions).

I figured they gave me an easy question because the interviewer had decided to pass on me, but lo and behold, I got an email the next day for an onsite interview (excited).

They flew me out to San Jose and put me up in a nice hotel. The interview process was like others have described on here: the first day was a career fair/team matching event, and the second day was interviews. I got matched with two teams.

Both interviews were with a panel of senior engineers on each of the respective teams. The first interview included a handful of technical questions, some easy and some a little tougher, but no DP or intricate problems. I thought I did above average. The second interview was entirely abstract, discussing my experience on past projects, thoughts on X or Y programming language, favorite university course/data structure/hobby. There wasn't a single technical question, which I thought was odd for a final round.

I received an offer from both teams I interviewed with, but ended up declining. From what I understand, both teams evaluated me independently. The fact that team 2 had given me an offer without me having demonstrated any actual ability to code (between the phone screen and my interview with them) was a red flag for me.

I use on-site interviews as a means to judge the caliber of the company I am interviewing for. While I found my interviewers very personable, the technical aspect of these interviews failed to make me feel as if I had "earned" the position. Overall, it gave me a negative perception of the engineering culture at Adobe.

Adobe is a cool company doing interesting work, but in the end, I decided to pursue other options.

Questions

Mostly array/sorting questions.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 17 interview experiences for the Adobe Software Engineer role in San Jose, California.

Success Rate

47%
Pass Rate

Adobe's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in San Jose, California is fairly selective, failing a large portion of engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive65%
Neutral12%
Negative24%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Adobe's Software Engineer interview process in San Jose, California.

Adobe Work Experiences