I applied online. The process took 4 weeks.

Usually I don't write reviews, but I feel that the final feedbacks are quite contradictory, so I thought I would share my experience for anyone else who might feel the same way. I agree with some of the other reviews: be prepared that some engineers might not remember what you actually said or did, and they do seem to nitpick when technically (tech skills or soft skills) there is nothing wrong with your interviews because they have too many candidates. There are 4 stages as stated by the other reviews:

• Technical project discussion
• Coding (take home - write a production grade web crawler in the language of your choice or online pairing)
• System design (doorbell motion sensor)
• Behavioural

To begin with, I just want to say that I enjoyed chatting with all the engineers during my interview process. They all seemed to be very nice and friendly people, and I could see myself working with them. My recruiter Harriet was very helpful, and she was also very responsive. However, I do have a few things to say.

Although I successfully completed the take-home task, I found the scope of the project too wide. It says don't spend more than 4 hours on it, but frankly a production grade web crawler can take days if you want to make it right. So I ended up spending much longer than 4 hours, but was told it was a little over-engineered. The feedback at this stage was very positive, but the interviewer missed some of the features that were clearly written in my code and included those as negative feedbacks. Considering I did pass the stage, I wasn't too bothered.

The system design interview was quite simple from a technical angle. I say don't overthink it too much. But I was confused as to what they are looking for in a candidate. I successfully implemented all the features, but the final feedbacks said I had spent a bit too much time on the back-of-the-envelope estimate (it was literally 2 mins) and sometimes I went silent so that interviewers couldn't follow (but that was because I told them I had to think for a little bit and I explained to them once I came up with the solution how it works). They said I had good communication skills, but they couldn't follow sometimes... not sure if they are self-contradictory. Given that it's industry standard to include a back-of-the-envelope estimate at the beginning of the interview, I found it a bit odd that they didn't like that. I also wasn't sure why taking a few mins to think by myself was not ok... not sure if I must speak out loud all the time. In my opinion, the final solution and mutual understanding of the process matter so much more.

Behavioural interviews were also quite interesting. I'm not sure I agree with some of the feedbacks. They seemed to be looking for very standard approaches rather than someone who's able to come up with solutions that target specific scenarios. It's also worth mentioning that the behavioural interview was conducted by two senior engineers rather than a people leader. In my opinion, people leaders have more experience with dealing with conflicts and team management. Overall, I think the rejection reasons were not convincing enough, which makes me think they are honest when they say they are going with other candidates (probably someone who fits exactly what they are looking for). But people are really nice and very knowledgeable.

Describe a technical project you have worked on.

Write a web crawler in the language of your choice.

System design: motion sensor system of a doorbell. 1 answer.