Applied online in August 2014. I was contacted by a recruiter in early September 2014, who informed me there were two technical phone screens. I chose early October for the interviews, as I required extra time to prepare for my PhD proposal defense at the end of September.

The first interview went relatively smoothly. The interviewer asked basic Python questions, such as what list comprehension is and the time complexity of a very common algorithm. Then, he asked me to write some simple modules. I believe anyone familiar with computer science could do it in minutes.

The second interviewer did not call me in time, so we rescheduled for another day in the same week. The interviewer asked me a trial algorithm question in the first round, then extended it to a general case that required the candidate to have a deep understanding of recursion. I did not make it within the time limit.

Overall, it was a great experience.

What is list comprehension?