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Senior Site Reliability Engineer Interview Experience

July 1, 2024

Positive ExperienceGot Offer

Process

The interview process follows a standard structure, including:

Recruiter Screen
Hiring Manager Screen
Coding Challenge
Systems Design
Kubernetes Live Debugging
Core Values assessment

Coordination can take a little bit of time given engineers' schedules; however, the recruiter did an excellent job of keeping me informed with time estimates for the next steps.

Questions

The Kubernetes Live Debugging exercise used HackerRank to access a preconfigured Kubernetes instance via CLI and a demo service that needed to be fixed.

The coding challenge was through HackerRank and was a pretty typical SRE coding challenge. It wasn't too deep on the algorithms side, but be prepared for refactoring and understanding the Big O of the solution.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 2 interview experiences for the Patreon Senior Site Reliability Engineer role in United States.

Success Rate

50%

Pass Rate

Patreon's interview process for their Senior Site Reliability Engineer roles in the United States is fairly selective, failing a large portion of engineers who go through it.

Experience Rating

Positive50%

Neutral0%

Negative50%

Candidates reported having mixed feelings for Patreon's Senior Site Reliability Engineer interview process in United States.

Patreon Work Experiences

Exciting time to be at Patreon

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

January 7, 2021

Pros: I'm based in Dublin. The office opened in February 2020 and there are currently only 20 of us, so it's small but fun. We'll be doubling in size in 2021, so it's a cool time to join and be part of the growth of a tech unicorn. Most of the engineering team is based in SF, but we are building the international payments product in Dublin, so the work is interesting. There's lots of transparency and face-time with the leadership of the company. You get to hear all about how Patreon is performing, any issues, and how we are tackling them. There are still less than 300 employees globally, so it's not very hierarchical; you can Slack anyone in the company. Benefits are good and getting better. The craic is great.

Cons: Most of the Dublin office started remotely, so it has been a bit hard to get to know people. However, our managers do a good job of keeping everyone connected. We have flexible working as a company, so I don't think everyone will ever be back in the office. You'd need to enjoy that aspect of work. Also, it is a start-up atmosphere, which means lots of opportunities to do interesting work, but also a certain amount of chaos as stuff gets figured out.

Exciting time to be at Patreon

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

January 7, 2021

Pros: I'm based in Dublin. The office opened in February 2020 and there are currently only 20 of us, so it's small but fun. We'll be doubling in size in 2021, so it's a cool time to join and be part of the growth of a tech unicorn. Most of the engineering team is based in SF, but we are building the international payments product in Dublin, so the work is interesting. There's lots of transparency and face-time with the leadership of the company. You get to hear all about how Patreon is performing, any issues, and how we are tackling them. There are still less than 300 employees globally, so it's not very hierarchical; you can Slack anyone in the company. Benefits are good and getting better. The craic is great.

Cons: Most of the Dublin office started remotely, so it has been a bit hard to get to know people. However, our managers do a good job of keeping everyone connected. We have flexible working as a company, so I don't think everyone will ever be back in the office. You'd need to enjoy that aspect of work. Also, it is a start-up atmosphere, which means lots of opportunities to do interesting work, but also a certain amount of chaos as stuff gets figured out.

Patreon SWE Internship

Software Engineer(Internship) • Current Employee

New York, New York, United States

November 15, 2023

Pros: - Friendly office atmosphere - High impact projects - 1-on-1 mentor support

Cons: - Lack of code documentation

Patreon SWE Internship

Software Engineer(Internship) • Current Employee

New York, New York, United States

November 15, 2023

Pros: - Friendly office atmosphere - High impact projects - 1-on-1 mentor support

Cons: - Lack of code documentation

Creative Product, Toxic Culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Francisco, California, United States

Pros: Lots of great creators use the platform. It's satisfying to see so much great work being created on a product you worked on!

Cons: Where do I even begin? There's no room to grow. The only way to get promoted is to be pals with leadership while managing backstabbing colleagues who will throw you under the bus to get ahead. C-levels are flaky and indecisive and can't commit to a product roadmap or company goals. The CEO says "40 hours a week is not enough" while selling a company culture of creativity and work-life balance. There's no stability. VPs get hired and fired annually, along with a constant cycle of layoffs and hiring sprees for ICs. You'll have a new people manager every quarter.

Creative Product, Toxic Culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Francisco, California, United States

Pros: Lots of great creators use the platform. It's satisfying to see so much great work being created on a product you worked on!

Cons: Where do I even begin? There's no room to grow. The only way to get promoted is to be pals with leadership while managing backstabbing colleagues who will throw you under the bus to get ahead. C-levels are flaky and indecisive and can't commit to a product roadmap or company goals. The CEO says "40 hours a week is not enough" while selling a company culture of creativity and work-life balance. There's no stability. VPs get hired and fired annually, along with a constant cycle of layoffs and hiring sprees for ICs. You'll have a new people manager every quarter.

Exciting time to be at Patreon

Software Engineer • Current Employee

Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

January 7, 2021

Pros: I'm based in Dublin. The office opened in February 2020 and there are currently only 20 of us, so it's small but fun. We'll be doubling in size in 2021, so it's a cool time to join and be part of the growth of a tech unicorn. Most of the engineering team is based in SF, but we are building the international payments product in Dublin, so the work is interesting. There's lots of transparency and face-time with the leadership of the company. You get to hear all about how Patreon is performing, any issues, and how we are tackling them. There are still less than 300 employees globally, so it's not very hierarchical; you can Slack anyone in the company. Benefits are good and getting better. The craic is great.

Cons: Most of the Dublin office started remotely, so it has been a bit hard to get to know people. However, our managers do a good job of keeping everyone connected. We have flexible working as a company, so I don't think everyone will ever be back in the office. You'd need to enjoy that aspect of work. Also, it is a start-up atmosphere, which means lots of opportunities to do interesting work, but also a certain amount of chaos as stuff gets figured out.

5.0
Exciting time to be at Patreon
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
January 7, 2021
Pros: I'm based in Dublin. The office opened in February 2020 and there are currently only 20 of us, so it's small but fun. We'll be doubling in size in 2021, so it's a cool time to join and be part of the growth of a tech unicorn. Most of the engineering team is based in SF, but we are building the international payments product in Dublin, so the work is interesting. There's lots of transparency and face-time with the leadership of the company. You get to hear all about how Patreon is performing, any issues, and how we are tackling them. There are still less than 300 employees globally, so it's not very hierarchical; you can Slack anyone in the company. Benefits are good and getting better. The craic is great.
Cons: Most of the Dublin office started remotely, so it has been a bit hard to get to know people. However, our managers do a good job of keeping everyone connected. We have flexible working as a company, so I don't think everyone will ever be back in the office. You'd need to enjoy that aspect of work. Also, it is a start-up atmosphere, which means lots of opportunities to do interesting work, but also a certain amount of chaos as stuff gets figured out.

Patreon SWE Internship

Software Engineer(Internship) • Current Employee

New York, New York, United States

November 15, 2023

Pros: - Friendly office atmosphere - High impact projects - 1-on-1 mentor support

Cons: - Lack of code documentation

4.0
Patreon SWE Internship
Software Engineer(Internship) • Current Employee
New York, New York, United States
November 15, 2023
Pros: - Friendly office atmosphere - High impact projects - 1-on-1 mentor support
Cons: - Lack of code documentation

Creative Product, Toxic Culture

Software Engineer • Former Employee

San Francisco, California, United States

Pros: Lots of great creators use the platform. It's satisfying to see so much great work being created on a product you worked on!

Cons: Where do I even begin? There's no room to grow. The only way to get promoted is to be pals with leadership while managing backstabbing colleagues who will throw you under the bus to get ahead. C-levels are flaky and indecisive and can't commit to a product roadmap or company goals. The CEO says "40 hours a week is not enough" while selling a company culture of creativity and work-life balance. There's no stability. VPs get hired and fired annually, along with a constant cycle of layoffs and hiring sprees for ICs. You'll have a new people manager every quarter.

1.0
Creative Product, Toxic Culture
Software Engineer • Former Employee
San Francisco, California, United States
July 22, 2020
Pros: Lots of great creators use the platform. It's satisfying to see so much great work being created on a product you worked on!
Cons: Where do I even begin? There's no room to grow. The only way to get promoted is to be pals with leadership while managing backstabbing colleagues who will throw you under the bus to get ahead. C-levels are flaky and indecisive and can't commit to a product roadmap or company goals. The CEO says "40 hours a week is not enough" while selling a company culture of creativity and work-life balance. There's no stability. VPs get hired and fired annually, along with a constant cycle of layoffs and hiring sprees for ICs. You'll have a new people manager every quarter.

Patreon Interview Questions

Simplify Path

Given an absolute file path (Unix style), simplify it by resolving redundant separators, directory names, and navigating back up the directory structure. Return the simplified canonical path.

Logger Rate Limiter

Design a logger that prevents too many messages from being printed within a certain time window. The logger should only print a message if it hasn't been printed recently.

Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum

Find the maximum sum of any path in a binary tree, where a path can start and end at any node. The path must contain at least one node.

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