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Software Engineer Interview Experience - New York, New York

February 1, 2018
Negative ExperienceNo Offer

Process

If I had to describe this process in one word, it would be "loooooong". I was first contacted by the recruiter there in the middle of November, and the process finally completed mid-February, having taken almost exactly three months. First, I had a phone call with the recruiter. Then (about an hour long) a technical phone screen with an engineer. Then they disappeared for about a week and a half, so I thought they were not going forward. Then I get an email from the recruiter, pretending that she sent me some "coding challenge" earlier, which she definitely did not. So, she sends it "again". It's a fairly involved task (not terribly complicated or anything, just a lot of details to spell out); I had to spend, maybe 4-5 hours on it in total. I send my solution back, and they disappear for another couple of weeks. Then, they come back again, and say they want to bring me in for an in-person interview... two weeks from now. I kinda insist that I'd like it sooner, so they move it a week up. I spent four hours in their office, meeting four different people (plus one "shadow"). Technical questions were rather trivial; nothing interesting to mention. They kept asking me BS stuff, like "describe your ideal team", or "tell us what you are proud of", so that I had to repeat the same thing at least three times. Four days later (wow, that was fast for a change!), I get an email from them, notifying me that they decided to pass. Overall, this wasn't a bad experience (aside from the fact that it was three months long), but I find it particularly rude and insulting that they wouldn't share any feedback with me, or give me a reason for their decision. I mean, after investing a significant amount of my time into talking with them, and working on their riddles, I would expect the common courtesy of sharing their thoughts with me in the end. I am sure that when they make an offer, and the candidate rejects, they expect an explanation... yet, when the sides are switched, they feel it's okay for them to just tell people to get lost. I am not being bitter for having been rejected. If I did get an offer, I would probably not have accepted it anyway (especially not after reading the reviews on Glassdoor). I was just surprised to find this sort of behavior that I'd sooner expect from the "old school" places like Oracle or IBM, that I specifically try to avoid for this exact reason. Overall, not pleased at all. Should not have wasted my time with these guys.

Questions

Describe what you consider to be a good team.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 38 interview experiences for the Datadog Software Engineer role in New York, New York.

Success Rate

29%
Pass Rate

Datadog's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in New York, New York is very selective, failing most engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive58%
Neutral16%
Negative26%

Candidates reported having very good feelings for Datadog's Software Engineer interview process in New York, New York.

Datadog Work Experiences