A friend referred me. They offer a bonus for referrals, so I gave my resume to him, and he passed it on.

I received a call from a recruiter who set up an hour-long phone screen with a manager. The manager spoke to me for a bit about what Salesforce does and what his team does in particular, so I got the impression I was interviewing for his team specifically.

We discussed my current job, how aggressively I was looking for a new one, and then he asked a few general conceptual questions that anyone with real experience would be able to answer. Following that, the recruiter scheduled an in-person interview for a week later.

The all-day interview consisted of three interviews with other developers, lunch with the manager, and a programming test. The test itself was quite easy; it seemed designed to ensure I actually had the experience I claimed. Lunch was good, and we talked a lot about why I was looking for a new job and what the team was seeking. They also made it clear that if I wasn't a fit for their team but they liked me, they would pass my resume on to other teams.

I was asked many questions, ranging from whiteboarding code to conceptual topics. One of the interviewers asked very challenging questions, and we had some interesting discussions. I believe that discussion sealed the deal. I received an offer a week later.

One of the interviewers asked me to write two algorithms for parsing XML:

• One that was as memory efficient as possible.
• The other that was as optimized as possible.