Software Engineer Interview Experience - San Francisco, California
Process
I received an interview call from Samsara, and we set up a time for Friday.
The interviewer called a few minutes late. He asked me about myself and about one of the projects from my past experience that I would like to share.
After that, we jumped right into coding questions. He made the problem sound like something they deal with every day at Samsara, but it was super easy, and I highly doubt that's something they would be solving for a company growing this fast.
I was able to answer all of his questions, and we had 10 minutes to spare before ending the interview.
It seems like it was a training interview for the interviewer; they had no intention of interviewing or hiring me for the position. It was a joke.
I am actively looking for a new job and was counting on this company. I am so disappointed. I highly discourage people from applying at Samsara. The interview and the whole process are a joke to them. It was a very negative experience.
Questions
Write a load(), unload(), and weight() function.
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 22 interview experiences for the Samsara Software Engineer role in San Francisco, California.
Success Rate
Samsara's interview process for their Software Engineer roles in San Francisco, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Candidates reported having mixed feelings for Samsara's Software Engineer interview process in San Francisco, California.
Samsara Work Experiences
- 5.0Build Solutions, Growing PainsSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesNovember 4, 2025Pros: - Great tech stack - Big TAM - Lots of opportunities to diversify - Easy to build solutions ground upCons: Not much, but typical growing pains.
- 3.0Smart Colleagues, Intense CultureSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesJuly 5, 2025Pros: Good company overall, smart people.Cons: intense culture, sometimes with the layoffs that occurred.
- 1.0A formerly great place has turned extremely toxic and hostileSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesJune 24, 2025Pros: Fully remote work, some very smart senior and staff developers, and good internal dev tooling. Local development and debugging are pretty smooth along with CI/CD. The culture was good until 2023.Cons: Management and execs have become incredibly demanding since 2023. They push hard for new features without giving teams the time to scope them. Employees then take the blame and get let go immediately. I had a director literally tell me he "prioritizes work over family" in a one-on-one. Remote work here is deceptive because Samsara uses that to overwork employees. It is common now to be working from home during weekends or outside business hours. Oncall is the absolute worst. Depending on the team, expect about one week a month of never leaving your phone or computer. You can get paged at 3 AM, and you are expected to wake up and look at it. Your work metrics are also recorded to compare you to coworkers and serve as evidence to "up-and-out" you (fire you if not promoted).
Samsara Interview Questions
