Taro Logo

Senior Python Developer Interview Experience - Chicago, Illinois

April 1, 2016
Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I was contacted by a recruiter who arranged a technical phone screen and then a two-hour onsite interview. Programming exercises for all technical interviews were conducted via the CoderPad website.

The onsite visit had two technical interviews, one with each interviewer, followed by an HR interview. One of the two technical interviewers for the onsite visit was remote, and the interview was arranged over videoconference.

The onsite technical interviewer seemed to mislead me into thinking that the position involved individual responsibility and assignments rather than shared team assignments. This misunderstanding hurt my candidacy.

The HR interviewer was distrustful, and the experience was not pleasant. Some of the HR questions were:

  • Why are you looking to move from your current position and employer?
  • How was your most recent performance review at your current employer? What were the remarks? Were there any negative remarks?
  • People who succeed at Citadel are always hungry for work. Are you one such person? (Note that this definition of success is merely the HR interviewer's sordid perspective, and not a true reflection of what it actually takes to succeed at one's job. It is also very possibly an indication of the twelve-hour workdays that you can expect if you do get hired.)

After the interview, two weeks went by, after which time I received feedback from the recruiter stating that I was not selected. The indicated reason was entirely bogus.

Questions

Write a function to compute a simple moving average (SMA) of a list of numbers, for example, 1 to 10. The function should accept a window length, for example, 3. What would be some optimizations?

How would you write a program to move inside a square spiral? Start at the upper left corner of the square and walk its edges clockwise. Just before re-approaching the upper left corner, spiral into the square instead, ultimately arriving at the center of the square.

Write a function to return the nth Fibonacci number. The first two can be assumed to be 1 and 1. The third and fourth are then calculated to be 2 and 3.

Given a very long string composed of numbers as characters, find the four-character substring that has the largest multiple. For example, given the string "809723", the two-character substring with the largest multiple is "97", having a multiple of 9 * 7 = 63.

For the years 1901 to 2000, count the total number of Sundays that fell on the first of a month.

Was this helpful?

Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Citadel Senior Python Developer role in Chicago, Illinois.

Success Rate

0%
Pass Rate

Citadel's interview process for their Senior Python Developer roles in Chicago, Illinois is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive0%
Neutral0%
Negative100%

Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Citadel's Senior Python Developer interview process in Chicago, Illinois.

Citadel Work Experiences