Coupang

Principal Software Engineer Interview Experience - Seoul, South Korea

November 1, 2017

Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I had two phone interviews and two onsite interviews.

Let me talk about the worst part of the interview process.

The last interviewer, who was the head of the team I applied for, asked me a lot of weird questions as if I were being interrogated. I wanted to stop the interview but decided to proceed as politely as possible.

After all, I didn't get the offer, but I am glad.

This was the worst interviewer I've ever experienced. I understood why the press talked badly about the company.

I recommend you think twice before applying for any job at Coupang.

Questions

Fairly easy algorithms and multithreading questions.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Coupang Principal Software Engineer role in Seoul, South Korea.

Success Rate

0%

Pass Rate

Coupang's interview process for their Principal Software Engineer roles in Seoul, South Korea is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive0%

Neutral0%

Negative100%

Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Coupang's Principal Software Engineer interview process in Seoul, South Korea.

Coupang Work Experiences

Broad Code Access, Bad Platform

Principal Software Engineer • Former Employee

Shanghai, Shanghai, China

August 30, 2023

Pros: Engineers will touch and work on code/systems from many teams, if you're in the Full Stack Team.

Cons: The company builds a hard-to-use platform on AWS, which is worse than native AWS services.

Broad Code Access, Bad Platform

Principal Software Engineer • Former Employee

Shanghai, Shanghai, China

August 30, 2023

Pros: Engineers will touch and work on code/systems from many teams, if you're in the Full Stack Team.

Cons: The company builds a hard-to-use platform on AWS, which is worse than native AWS services.

Great Company to Work For

Principal Software Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Using all the right technologies. Lots of cool people from other big companies. Lots of things you need to build.

Cons: * Lots of established code base/teams means the pace can be slow. * Company stock has gone down a lot!

Great Company to Work For

Principal Software Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Using all the right technologies. Lots of cool people from other big companies. Lots of things you need to build.

Cons: * Lots of established code base/teams means the pace can be slow. * Company stock has gone down a lot!

Coupang work culture

Principal Software Engineer • Former Employee

Mountain View, California, United States

December 11, 2021

Pros: Great leadership under Kim. Great competition with Amazon, with great execution by the Coupang team. As a company, I believe it will succeed in the long run.

Cons: I worked in Mountain View, USA center for two years. People in the Growth Engineering group are primarily from acquisition. Managers are not very experienced and are often political, mostly guided by self-protection on the job, leaving no room for innovation from newcomers. Talent-wise, some very talented engineers are there, and some are not. It is a mixed work culture, depending on which group or manager one gets to work with. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a manager of a negative category, resulting in half of the team leaving him.

Coupang work culture

Principal Software Engineer • Former Employee

Mountain View, California, United States

December 11, 2021

Pros: Great leadership under Kim. Great competition with Amazon, with great execution by the Coupang team. As a company, I believe it will succeed in the long run.

Cons: I worked in Mountain View, USA center for two years. People in the Growth Engineering group are primarily from acquisition. Managers are not very experienced and are often political, mostly guided by self-protection on the job, leaving no room for innovation from newcomers. Talent-wise, some very talented engineers are there, and some are not. It is a mixed work culture, depending on which group or manager one gets to work with. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a manager of a negative category, resulting in half of the team leaving him.

Broad Code Access, Bad Platform

Principal Software Engineer • Former Employee

Shanghai, Shanghai, China

August 30, 2023

Pros: Engineers will touch and work on code/systems from many teams, if you're in the Full Stack Team.

Cons: The company builds a hard-to-use platform on AWS, which is worse than native AWS services.

2.0
Broad Code Access, Bad Platform
Principal Software Engineer • Former Employee
Shanghai, Shanghai, China
August 30, 2023
Pros: Engineers will touch and work on code/systems from many teams, if you're in the Full Stack Team.
Cons: The company builds a hard-to-use platform on AWS, which is worse than native AWS services.

Great Company to Work For

Principal Software Engineer • Current Employee

Seattle, Washington, United States

Pros: Using all the right technologies. Lots of cool people from other big companies. Lots of things you need to build.

Cons: * Lots of established code base/teams means the pace can be slow. * Company stock has gone down a lot!

4.0
Great Company to Work For
Principal Software Engineer • Current Employee
Seattle, Washington, United States
May 10, 2022
Pros: Using all the right technologies. Lots of cool people from other big companies. Lots of things you need to build.
Cons: * Lots of established code base/teams means the pace can be slow. * Company stock has gone down a lot!

Coupang work culture

Principal Software Engineer • Former Employee

Mountain View, California, United States

December 11, 2021

Pros: Great leadership under Kim. Great competition with Amazon, with great execution by the Coupang team. As a company, I believe it will succeed in the long run.

Cons: I worked in Mountain View, USA center for two years. People in the Growth Engineering group are primarily from acquisition. Managers are not very experienced and are often political, mostly guided by self-protection on the job, leaving no room for innovation from newcomers. Talent-wise, some very talented engineers are there, and some are not. It is a mixed work culture, depending on which group or manager one gets to work with. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a manager of a negative category, resulting in half of the team leaving him.

3.0
Coupang work culture
Principal Software Engineer • Former Employee
Mountain View, California, United States
December 11, 2021
Pros: Great leadership under Kim. Great competition with Amazon, with great execution by the Coupang team. As a company, I believe it will succeed in the long run.
Cons: I worked in Mountain View, USA center for two years. People in the Growth Engineering group are primarily from acquisition. Managers are not very experienced and are often political, mostly guided by self-protection on the job, leaving no room for innovation from newcomers. Talent-wise, some very talented engineers are there, and some are not. It is a mixed work culture, depending on which group or manager one gets to work with. Unfortunately, I had to deal with a manager of a negative category, resulting in half of the team leaving him.

Coupang Interview Questions

Largest Rectangle in Histogram

Find the largest rectangular area that can fit within a histogram defined by an array of bar heights. You are given an array representing the height of bars, where each bar has a width of 1.

LRU Cache

Design a data structure that acts as a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache. Implement methods to get and put key-value pairs, evicting the least recently used entry when the cache is full.

Linked ListsDynamic Programming

Decode String

The problem involves decoding a string that follows a specific encoding rule: k[encoded_string], where the encoded_string inside the square brackets is repeated exactly k times. Your task is to decode the string and return the decoded string.

StringsStacksRecursion

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