Software Engineer Interview Experience - Bengaluru, India
January 1, 2020
Negative ExperienceNo Offer
Process
The process was very smooth. However, I don't think HRs were in sync. I applied for one position, but the interviewers were unaware of which position I had applied for. Consequently, they asked questions related to fields in which I haven't worked or don't have sufficient experience, which didn't make sense.
The initial two rounds started an hour late. In the second round, the interviewer was also late and then asked me to wait for 20 more minutes because he was doing some work. During the interview, he was not listening to my solutions or answers and kept typing.
The third and fourth rounds went well, I guess. However, I didn't receive any response from HR after the interviews. I tried calling and emailing, but they did not pick up calls or reply to emails.
I don't know what they are up to, but if a person devotes a day or two for an interview, the least they can expect is an email or phone call with feedback.
- Machine coding round
- DS/Problem Solving round (Interviewer was very rude and was not listening to my solutions)
- Design round (Interviewer was very friendly. He scoped down the problem statement so it could be done within the interview's timeframe, and it was a good and interactive discussion.)
- Managerial Round (Interviewer told me about the work happening in PhonePe, how teams are divided, how hiring happens, that candidates can select their own team when hired, and more about the company culture. He also asked about my current work, what tech stack I want to work on, and for a problem statement to solve on board and explain the in-out of the solution.) - This was also a very interactive interview session.
I think HRs should respect candidates' time and at least provide them with feedback or the results.
Questions
-
Is a graph a linked list or not?
-
Design an inventory management system.
-
Topological sorting.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 27 interview experiences for the PhonePe Software Engineer role in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
Success Rate
15%
Pass Rate
PhonePe's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in Bengaluru, Karnataka is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Positive74%
Neutral11%
Negative15%
Candidates reported having very good feelings for PhonePe's Software Engineer interview process in Bengaluru, Karnataka.
PhonePe Work Experiences
1.0
Good money with no personal life
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
October 5, 2023
Pros: 1. Tech stack is good. Dropwizard framework with polyglot persistence, including MariaDB, Aerospike, ElasticSearch, and HBase. Message queues like RabbitMQ and Kafka. Numerous internal Dropwizard bundles acting as a facade.
2. Money, yeah, you will get a lot depending on your previous salary and offers.
Cons: 1. PIP culture. Guy who recommended me PhonePe saying it's so good is on PIP himself.
2. Young workforce mostly freshers, so ways of working are ad-hoc. Early joiners with 6-8 years of experience are Architect/Engineering Manager. No proper defined guidelines. Requirements can change frequently. They call it Agile :p.
3. Generally, people work on weekends and after office. Good to know this before joining.
4. My personal life has taken a bad hit here.
5. Everyone here is slogging off. Culture of doing things as fast as possible with no proper testing, maybe no QAs, no proper test cases, improper monitoring and alerting. Error handling? Yeah, we get a 500 message: "Something went wrong" majorly.
6. Work from office culture. WFH is strongly discouraged, which may be fine, but overworking with a work from office culture is worse.
7. People from Amazon making the culture worse. Culture has changed from OK to bad to worse.
8. Lot of ego and people do not respect each other. Every senior guy has 30-50 messages which they will never reply to. These guys will not suggest you what to do but will come later on saying you should have done it this way or give the reviews. Observed it cross-teams.
9. Oldies vs Newbies politics. They have inducted some mid-senior engineers whose presence has threatened people who have been working there for 2-3 years and have grown their influence. These people will try their best to sideline you, and as far as I have observed, they are successful in doing so. Very bad for mid-senior engineers. Don't bother to join.
10. Few people have too much power to screw you. You have to be in their good books. The entire org is people-oriented rather than being process-oriented, so it helps these people to do what they wish.
11. People don't tell you what work you have to do, what features they want, and all. They just need you to figure it out as they don't have time to look into things. Requirements are not detailed. Nobody works on requirements or anything. Just do it. Then do iterations as long as your lead is not satisfied.
12. Valuation has peaked in the near term, so don't think much appreciation in ESOPs for now. You get ESOPs which they may buy back a certain percentage, but you cannot liquidate them, so it's paper money.
13. No rating, no hierarchy, and hence no promotion.
14. No documentation, so you have a hard time understanding things.
15. Operating like a startup, so all the cons that come with a startup are here.
1.0
Not a good culture
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
April 10, 2024
Pros: People are hard-working, especially in some teams.
Free lunch
Cons: Toxic culture.
No advance tech.
Poor management.
Treat employees as servants.
Cost cutting.
2.0
Join at your own risk
Software Engineer • Current Employee
Bengaluru, Karnataka, India
October 15, 2019
Pros: - decent tech stack
- flat hierarchy
Cons: - Might have to work on bug fixes/maintenance work always and get the blame.
- Bad work culture and unnecessary pressure.
- Chaos: no proper organized structure in product & engg. teams.
- 1.0Good money with no personal lifeSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeBengaluru, Karnataka, IndiaOctober 5, 2023Pros: 1. Tech stack is good. Dropwizard framework with polyglot persistence, including MariaDB, Aerospike, ElasticSearch, and HBase. Message queues like RabbitMQ and Kafka. Numerous internal Dropwizard bundles acting as a facade. 2. Money, yeah, you will get a lot depending on your previous salary and offers.Cons: 1. PIP culture. Guy who recommended me PhonePe saying it's so good is on PIP himself. 2. Young workforce mostly freshers, so ways of working are ad-hoc. Early joiners with 6-8 years of experience are Architect/Engineering Manager. No proper defined guidelines. Requirements can change frequently. They call it Agile :p. 3. Generally, people work on weekends and after office. Good to know this before joining. 4. My personal life has taken a bad hit here. 5. Everyone here is slogging off. Culture of doing things as fast as possible with no proper testing, maybe no QAs, no proper test cases, improper monitoring and alerting. Error handling? Yeah, we get a 500 message: "Something went wrong" majorly. 6. Work from office culture. WFH is strongly discouraged, which may be fine, but overworking with a work from office culture is worse. 7. People from Amazon making the culture worse. Culture has changed from OK to bad to worse. 8. Lot of ego and people do not respect each other. Every senior guy has 30-50 messages which they will never reply to. These guys will not suggest you what to do but will come later on saying you should have done it this way or give the reviews. Observed it cross-teams. 9. Oldies vs Newbies politics. They have inducted some mid-senior engineers whose presence has threatened people who have been working there for 2-3 years and have grown their influence. These people will try their best to sideline you, and as far as I have observed, they are successful in doing so. Very bad for mid-senior engineers. Don't bother to join. 10. Few people have too much power to screw you. You have to be in their good books. The entire org is people-oriented rather than being process-oriented, so it helps these people to do what they wish. 11. People don't tell you what work you have to do, what features they want, and all. They just need you to figure it out as they don't have time to look into things. Requirements are not detailed. Nobody works on requirements or anything. Just do it. Then do iterations as long as your lead is not satisfied. 12. Valuation has peaked in the near term, so don't think much appreciation in ESOPs for now. You get ESOPs which they may buy back a certain percentage, but you cannot liquidate them, so it's paper money. 13. No rating, no hierarchy, and hence no promotion. 14. No documentation, so you have a hard time understanding things. 15. Operating like a startup, so all the cons that come with a startup are here.
- 1.0Not a good cultureSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeBengaluru, Karnataka, IndiaApril 10, 2024Pros: People are hard-working, especially in some teams. Free lunchCons: Toxic culture. No advance tech. Poor management. Treat employees as servants. Cost cutting.
- 2.0Join at your own riskSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeBengaluru, Karnataka, IndiaOctober 15, 2019Pros: - decent tech stack - flat hierarchyCons: - Might have to work on bug fixes/maintenance work always and get the blame. - Bad work culture and unnecessary pressure. - Chaos: no proper organized structure in product & engg. teams.
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