I was initially contacted by a recruiter on LinkedIn. After an initial conversation with the recruiter, I then had a standard phone interview that involved a discussion with a senior engineer and a simple coding question. I used Collabedit to code.

After the phone interview, I was invited onsite. Box had an interesting onsite interview process. Rather than conducting a series of whiteboard coding questions using algorithms and data structures, their format was a bit different. I'm not sure if this is standard for all engineering candidates or if this was unique to the team and position I was applying for.

My interviews consisted of:

• A system design question
• A technical communication session (describe a significant project you worked on and discuss tradeoffs, outcomes, design decisions, etc.)
• A 90-minute coding exercise on my laptop
• A simulated code review where I audited and reviewed some code written by a junior engineer
• Lunch with the hiring manager

The sessions were intended to simulate what an engineer might do on a day-to-day basis at Box.

In my particular case, I had a little bit of trouble with the coding exercise and the system design question. The interviewers liked what they saw in my experience and with what they saw in the other sessions, so I was asked to come back for a second onsite a week later. The second onsite consisted of:

• A whiteboard question
• A conversation with the VP in charge of the group I was interviewing for
• A second lunch with the hiring manager

None of the questions involved any of the classic interview questions that I had seen before. The coding exercise wasn't too bad, but I missed a key requirement, which ended up making my code verbose and a little too complicated. I ended up re-implementing the code at home after the interview and without the pressure of being in an interview setting, and it was a much easier exercise. My advice for this section is to definitely pay attention to the requirements given to you and not to rush. I was also given a phone number and email address to use if I had questions, so I would also advise asking questions if there are ever any doubts around what you're building.

Throughout the process, the interviewers were very nice and happy to answer any questions I had about what it was like to work at Box. The conversation with the VP, in particular, was very good. I felt like I got very sincere and honest answers to all the questions I had.

The recruiters were also very responsive and very quick to schedule.

In the end, I was not extended an offer, but it was a great experience from start to finish. The whole process took about 3 weeks from start to finish.