Process
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks.
Got a message on LinkedIn from a company recruiter. He took time to go through the overall hiring process, the company's mission, and ethic matters. Good communication from the recruiters. Neither recruiters nor interviewers were able to describe the type of work we are applying for. They keep it secret. All interviewers were really enjoyable to talk with, but...
Interviews do not show a great company culture, and browsing on Glassdoor showed quite bad 1-star reviews which confirms that. Feedback was quite blank, and they were not able to explain what was wrong. As a candidate, I was not able to tell what was being assessed during interviews. I answered all interviewers' questions and went through each exercise without much difficulty, but got short on time.
What they don't say: you are expected to complete each exercise to the fullest, which I believe was the root cause of the rejection. The live coding interview was disturbing because it does look like the expectation from the interviewer was to get to the perfect solution without trial and error. In other words, I believe a candidate can pass the interview process by doing the following:
- Is the candidate able to look on Glassdoor for the interview questions
- To solve them on his end
- Day of the interview, write down the code by heart and answer their questions.
In my opinion, it shows an unrealistic and poor engineering culture. At the end, the recruiter gives you a quick call to give your feedback; he was supposed to get back to me, and a few days later, I got an automated rejection email.
Questions
First stage: Implement a simple program that reproduces the behaviour of the tree command, but on a mocked file-system.
Live-coding: Design a compression algorithm on a 4-character fixed alphabet. What happens when the number of output symbols isn't a multiple of 4?
System design: Design a system that manages drones (with I suspect erratic and bad connectivity environment). Drones' cameras must spot rotten crop fields and report them.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Helsing Deployed Software Engineer role.
Success Rate
Helsing's interview process for their Deployed Software Engineer roles is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having very negative feelings for Helsing's Deployed Software Engineer interview process.
Helsing Work Experiences
- 5.0The best combination of start-up and industry I've ever worked forSenior Software Engineer • Current EmployeeLondon, EnglandApril 12, 2023Pros: - Fantastic colleagues and interesting conversations - Always feel like I'm learning something - Ability to 'forge your own adventure' with no boundaries to what you can and cannot work on - Modern tech-stack; writing Rust is a dream - Huge growth opportunities - EU-centric, so sensible working hours and no expectation to work overtime; people work hard because they believe in the company.Cons: - Classic start-up teething pains. We're a small company with big ambitions, and it's easy to forget that we're only ~200 people, not 2000. - Lots of growth to do breaking out of the startup mindset, still building a solid foundation (but we're only 2 years old!)
- 5.0High performance culture, great missionSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeJune 1, 2024Pros: The mission of the company is a critical one for Europe. You have the ability to have significant real-world impact and an excellent business outlook. The company has the highest talent density of any tech company I've worked at, featuring world-class AI and engineering leadership to learn from and work closely with. There is a high-performance, no BS culture, and employees are extremely passionate about the mission. If you care about the mission and enjoy working at a high level with passionate people, then Helsing will be a good fit for you.Cons: The company could be better at the process for providing feedback on performance for development. But it is a young company, and there is no reason why this can't improve.
- 1.0TerribleAI Researcher • Current EmployeeMunich, BavariaFebruary 1, 2024Pros: If you want to burn out, this is it.Cons: It's a second McKinsey. Even worse. You either work ridiculous hours (12+ every day and weekends maybe) and are fine being micromanaged, or will be fired without any justification. In addition, as others pointed out, the positive reviews are fake. Nobody I know here would write that kind of stuff. I've even heard that management get other people to write the fake reviews.
