Phase 1 was a technical phone screen interview with two team leads. They asked a variety of platform and programming knowledge questions, in my case particularly focused on Java, the JVM, and cloud technologies.

There was less an emphasis on getting to as many questions as possible and more on the dialogues surrounding some of them. For example, a question about encapsulation led to a discussion of why encapsulation is important and how it affects software design approaches.

The goal of this interview was to gauge my knowledge of fundamentals and get a feel for my level of competency to determine if it would be appropriate to move on to Phase 2.

Phase 2 was a take-home assignment sent by email, with guidance for completion but no enforced restrictions. The assignment involved working with and improving an existing application, which I found compelling as it reflects the kind of day-to-day experiences of software engineers – we tend to spend much more time in other people's code than we do writing our own new code.

By "no enforced restrictions" I mean that it was suggested that one spend approximately 8 hours on the assignment, but there was nothing monitoring the time spent and no rule about spending less or more time on it. I liked that freedom to put as much as I wanted into the assignment, knowing that I could benefit from going above and beyond if I so chose.

The actual interview was a presentation of my project, in whatever manner I saw fit, to a group of engineers, team leads, and directors. The presentation allowed for lots of back-and-forth, in which attendees would probe into why I made certain decisions and what thought process went into the direction and organization of my project.

At the conclusion of the presentation, I was provided feedback by every attendee. After that, I had a couple of one-on-one interviews with a senior team lead and a director. Both of which focused more on soft skills like development methodology, team dynamics, and how I approach my work and relationships.

What is the value of object-oriented programming?

In what circumstances could it not be the best choice?