I was really impressed by the speed of response from everyone at Pure, including the CEO. Everything was clearly explained to me about the process.

After taking the online test and phone screen, I was invited to a face-to-face interview in Mountain View.

Having spent the last few years outside software engineering, I was concerned that I might suffer during the interviews. However, I was pleased to learn that the sorts of problems I was given were of a general nature, and the process was as much about the journey towards the solution as the solution itself.

All interviews involved writing on the whiteboard, and I thoroughly recommend trying to explain your thoughts, even when you haven't yet worked out what to write on the board.

I met three engineers and the CTO. Each interview was thought-provoking in its own way, and I enjoyed the process, even though I was exhausted at the end of the day. This included a lunch break with two more engineers at a local restaurant.

At the end of the face-to-face interviews, I didn't get the job there and then, but with a bit of perseverance, I got accepted!

From Glassdoor, I knew there was a circle question, and I had a stab at writing a program prior to the interview. That didn't really help me, as the question was slightly different, and again, it was really about the process of arriving at the right answer rather than writing out a solution.

All the other questions were unexpected and thought-provoking. I think the most difficult was the buddy-bitmap problem, mainly because it has so many facets. This is also the CTO's pet problem, and it left me drained by the end of it. I was tired, and by the end of it, I could not think straight.