Figma

Front End Software Engineer Interview Experience

September 1, 2024

Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

Call with recruiter:

The recruiters take forever to answer between rounds.

Code interview: An easy OOP question.

Four-round interview:

Front-end question
Front-end design
Regular coding question
Talk to manager

Even though I finished all the problems and two interviewers mentioned I did great, I was not given an offer with no explanation.

Questions

Here's a breakdown of the interview questions:

A question to build a small website that prints JSON. (Make sure to ask the interviewer if you can search during the interview).
A design question to implement an improvement to a current feature. This was a very open question where I had to come up with the changes, discuss their visual presentation, and then create the TypeScript interfaces for the necessary components.
A question on Object-Oriented Programming related to tennis.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Figma Front End Software Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

0%

Pass Rate

Figma's interview process for their Front End Software Engineer roles in the United States is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive0%

Neutral100%

Negative0%

Candidates reported having mixed feelings for Figma's Front End Software Engineer interview process in United States.

Figma Work Experiences

Varied People, Tense Atmosphere

Desarrollador De Software • Current Employee

Pros: Mucha variedad de personas y espacios.

Cons: Mal ambiente laboral, muy tenso y mala comunicación.

Varied People, Tense Atmosphere

Desarrollador De Software • Current Employee

Pros: Mucha variedad de personas y espacios.

Cons: Mal ambiente laboral, muy tenso y mala comunicación.

Figma does not know how to ship products

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: • Decent work-life balance; I don't think there's a hustle culture per se • Leadership that is exceptionally smart and personable (but see issues on execution below) • Humble eng team, and few egos

Cons: My biggest shock when I joined this company was just how bad the execution on the product team actually is. I had assumed a company with a beloved product must have an excellent product org, but far from it! It seems like most of Figma's successes were accidental, or due to some early engineers' visionary work. Mainly, this company does not know how to ship AI products incrementally. Specifically, the org that builds Figma AI is constantly stuck in the cycle of: * CEO gets scared by something on Twitter * Product engineers rush to build a demo for new features that'll save the company * Prototype gets rushed, and customers are unhappy * Overpaid team of PhD researchers gets pulled in to hill climb on quality, but takes too long to make meaningful progress * Customers get even more angry * Product team adds scope * The market has moved on to the next shiny AI thing * We scrap the project, or are asked to do the next, even bigger thing * And so on, ad infinitum, but no meaningful AI products ever ship. But hey, they pay pretty well!

Figma does not know how to ship products

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: • Decent work-life balance; I don't think there's a hustle culture per se • Leadership that is exceptionally smart and personable (but see issues on execution below) • Humble eng team, and few egos

Cons: My biggest shock when I joined this company was just how bad the execution on the product team actually is. I had assumed a company with a beloved product must have an excellent product org, but far from it! It seems like most of Figma's successes were accidental, or due to some early engineers' visionary work. Mainly, this company does not know how to ship AI products incrementally. Specifically, the org that builds Figma AI is constantly stuck in the cycle of: * CEO gets scared by something on Twitter * Product engineers rush to build a demo for new features that'll save the company * Prototype gets rushed, and customers are unhappy * Overpaid team of PhD researchers gets pulled in to hill climb on quality, but takes too long to make meaningful progress * Customers get even more angry * Product team adds scope * The market has moved on to the next shiny AI thing * We scrap the project, or are asked to do the next, even bigger thing * And so on, ad infinitum, but no meaningful AI products ever ship. But hey, they pay pretty well!

Great technical challenges, but lacking in culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Francisco, California, United States

February 22, 2019

Pros: - Great team - everybody was working hard but not excessively so. Work-life balance was very valued. - Short shipping cycle - new features were shipped every week and had direct impact on the product.

Cons: - Feedback was seriously lacking. Since there was no "direct" hierarchy in place, it was often tough to get good feedback on your work. - Office politics. Since there is no transparent feedback process, it was unclear how promotions were taking place, and those seemed random. - Intransparent hiring policies. It seemed to gear mostly towards ensuring some kind of diversity (whatever definition that entails) and not actual technical skill. - Leadership. The CEO doesn't have good skills to actually manage and provide a direction for the company. There doesn't seem to be a common goal.

Great technical challenges, but lacking in culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Francisco, California, United States

February 22, 2019

Pros: - Great team - everybody was working hard but not excessively so. Work-life balance was very valued. - Short shipping cycle - new features were shipped every week and had direct impact on the product.

Cons: - Feedback was seriously lacking. Since there was no "direct" hierarchy in place, it was often tough to get good feedback on your work. - Office politics. Since there is no transparent feedback process, it was unclear how promotions were taking place, and those seemed random. - Intransparent hiring policies. It seemed to gear mostly towards ensuring some kind of diversity (whatever definition that entails) and not actual technical skill. - Leadership. The CEO doesn't have good skills to actually manage and provide a direction for the company. There doesn't seem to be a common goal.

Varied People, Tense Atmosphere

Desarrollador De Software • Current Employee

Pros: Mucha variedad de personas y espacios.

Cons: Mal ambiente laboral, muy tenso y mala comunicación.

2.0
Varied People, Tense Atmosphere
Desarrollador De Software • Current Employee
Madrid, Spain
March 6, 2022
Pros: Mucha variedad de personas y espacios.
Cons: Mal ambiente laboral, muy tenso y mala comunicación.

Figma does not know how to ship products

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Pros: • Decent work-life balance; I don't think there's a hustle culture per se • Leadership that is exceptionally smart and personable (but see issues on execution below) • Humble eng team, and few egos

Cons: My biggest shock when I joined this company was just how bad the execution on the product team actually is. I had assumed a company with a beloved product must have an excellent product org, but far from it! It seems like most of Figma's successes were accidental, or due to some early engineers' visionary work. Mainly, this company does not know how to ship AI products incrementally. Specifically, the org that builds Figma AI is constantly stuck in the cycle of: * CEO gets scared by something on Twitter * Product engineers rush to build a demo for new features that'll save the company * Prototype gets rushed, and customers are unhappy * Overpaid team of PhD researchers gets pulled in to hill climb on quality, but takes too long to make meaningful progress * Customers get even more angry * Product team adds scope * The market has moved on to the next shiny AI thing * We scrap the project, or are asked to do the next, even bigger thing * And so on, ad infinitum, but no meaningful AI products ever ship. But hey, they pay pretty well!

2.0
Figma does not know how to ship products
Software Engineer • Current Employee
March 20, 2026
Pros: • Decent work-life balance; I don't think there's a hustle culture per se • Leadership that is exceptionally smart and personable (but see issues on execution below) • Humble eng team, and few egos
Cons: My biggest shock when I joined this company was just how bad the execution on the product team actually is. I had assumed a company with a beloved product must have an excellent product org, but far from it! It seems like most of Figma's successes were accidental, or due to some early engineers' visionary work. Mainly, this company does not know how to ship AI products incrementally. Specifically, the org that builds Figma AI is constantly stuck in the cycle of: * CEO gets scared by something on Twitter * Product engineers rush to build a demo for new features that'll save the company * Prototype gets rushed, and customers are unhappy * Overpaid team of PhD researchers gets pulled in to hill climb on quality, but takes too long to make meaningful progress * Customers get even more angry * Product team adds scope * The market has moved on to the next shiny AI thing * We scrap the project, or are asked to do the next, even bigger thing * And so on, ad infinitum, but no meaningful AI products ever ship. But hey, they pay pretty well!

Great technical challenges, but lacking in culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Francisco, California, United States

February 22, 2019

Pros: - Great team - everybody was working hard but not excessively so. Work-life balance was very valued. - Short shipping cycle - new features were shipped every week and had direct impact on the product.

Cons: - Feedback was seriously lacking. Since there was no "direct" hierarchy in place, it was often tough to get good feedback on your work. - Office politics. Since there is no transparent feedback process, it was unclear how promotions were taking place, and those seemed random. - Intransparent hiring policies. It seemed to gear mostly towards ensuring some kind of diversity (whatever definition that entails) and not actual technical skill. - Leadership. The CEO doesn't have good skills to actually manage and provide a direction for the company. There doesn't seem to be a common goal.

2.0
Great technical challenges, but lacking in culture
Software Engineer • Former Employee
San Francisco, California, United States
February 22, 2019
Pros: - Great team - everybody was working hard but not excessively so. Work-life balance was very valued. - Short shipping cycle - new features were shipped every week and had direct impact on the product.
Cons: - Feedback was seriously lacking. Since there was no "direct" hierarchy in place, it was often tough to get good feedback on your work. - Office politics. Since there is no transparent feedback process, it was unclear how promotions were taking place, and those seemed random. - Intransparent hiring policies. It seemed to gear mostly towards ensuring some kind of diversity (whatever definition that entails) and not actual technical skill. - Leadership. The CEO doesn't have good skills to actually manage and provide a direction for the company. There doesn't seem to be a common goal.

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