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Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience - Austin, Texas

March 1, 2022
Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

The technical screening interview was very easy. It was in-house, so not a third party like Karat, and the proctor was someone actually on the team I was applying for.

The on-site had three parts:

  1. Technical deep dive – you choose a project you've done and describe the system/architecture. I had a good experience here; the interviewer was also someone on the team I was applying for. At the end, I asked for feedback, and they gave me some.
  2. Object Oriented Design – this was the bit that caused the offer rejection and also a pretty negative experience. The interviewer wasn't someone on the team, and they had a difficult time describing the problem, the expectations, and the purpose of the exercise, even when clarification was requested. The exercise was "design a restaurant," in which you're expected to have a Customer class, Waiter class, etc. The interviewer insisted on the system reflecting a "real" restaurant, despite my attempts to contextualize it in software terms. This is their choice on how they want to conduct the interview, but I felt like it was a poor exercise for demonstrating my experience building large object-oriented architectures.
  3. Hiring Manager meeting – this bit was also positive. The red flag for me during this was the stress they put on "on call" responsibilities; they made it clear that there was a rotation where you'd be expected to have 24-hour on-call duty.

Overall, I think there are improvements to be made to their process, and I don't think it lends itself to finding the best talent, especially at the IC3+ level. The OO design bit felt condescending/childish, and it felt the least developed. I let my recruiter know as such.

Turnaround time for a rejection was two business days. The process moved relatively quickly otherwise.

Questions

Q: Given a list of constraints, customers, discounts, and a map between customers and discounts, answer some pretty simple questions about the data. If you know how maps work and can write a for loop, you will do fine.

Q: Design a restaurant in an OO way. This is an object entity design test, and you'll be expected to describe the data and APIs for different entities in a restaurant. Stress on the fact that it's a "real restaurant," e.g., waiters have to "go to customers" and "go to kitchen." Don't treat it like a food ordering app.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the DraftKings Senior Software Engineer role in Austin, Texas.

Success Rate

0%
Pass Rate

DraftKings's interview process for their Senior Software Engineer roles in Austin, Texas is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive0%
Neutral100%
Negative0%

Candidates reported having mixed feelings for DraftKings's Senior Software Engineer interview process in Austin, Texas.

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