SendGrid

Senior Software Engineer Interview Experience - Boulder, Colorado

April 1, 2013

Neutral ExperienceNo Offer

Process

I applied through the website and received an email back with options for scheduling an initial phone screen with one of their recruiters.

After the 30-minute phone screen, I had a 45-minute technical screen, which involved doing a couple of programming exercises on CollabEdit.

I passed the phone technical screen and was invited to an in-person technical interview at their Orange County, California office. It was a three-hour interview.

The in-person interview was technically challenging right from the beginning. Although I had studied up on core computer science concepts prior to the interview, the first question was on a topic I hadn't reviewed (merge sort), and it threw me off. Later, I was asked to write a binary search algorithm. I wrote the base algorithm, but I had a logic error that took me a long time to find.

There were four interviewers: three software engineers and the VP of engineering.

Questions

Given two arrays of numbers, write a method to combine and sort the two arrays.

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Interview Statistics

The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the SendGrid Senior Software Engineer role in Boulder, Colorado.

Success Rate

0%

Pass Rate

SendGrid's interview process for their Senior Software Engineer roles in Boulder, Colorado is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.

Experience Rating

Positive0%

Neutral100%

Negative0%

Candidates reported having mixed feelings for SendGrid's Senior Software Engineer interview process in Boulder, Colorado.

SendGrid Work Experiences

Hands down the best place I've worked

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Hiring people with the 4H mentality makes it much easier to ensure we're all mature enough to get along even when things go badly. There are lots and lots of perks at the company.

Cons: Management layers weren't really in place very strongly when I worked there, though it was much better by the time I left. This caused a ton of changes (mostly process) while management figured out what to do, but it showed they cared about the employees to do so. But it was pretty jarring for engineers for a while. Much better now, I think.

Hands down the best place I've worked

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Hiring people with the 4H mentality makes it much easier to ensure we're all mature enough to get along even when things go badly. There are lots and lots of perks at the company.

Cons: Management layers weren't really in place very strongly when I worked there, though it was much better by the time I left. This caused a ton of changes (mostly process) while management figured out what to do, but it showed they cared about the employees to do so. But it was pretty jarring for engineers for a while. Much better now, I think.

SendGrid SoCal Employee

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

January 18, 2017

Pros: The people are 4H: humble, hungry, honest, and happy. I enjoy working with these intelligent and motivated people. You are hard-pressed to find similar technical challenges and career growth opportunities in SoCal, because the systems are highly concurrent and operate at scale with a large existing customer base.

Cons: We are still struggling to develop solid development environments. Our stack is varied and complex, and while we make progress in making development easier for ourselves, there is room for a lot of growth in this area.

SendGrid SoCal Employee

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

January 18, 2017

Pros: The people are 4H: humble, hungry, honest, and happy. I enjoy working with these intelligent and motivated people. You are hard-pressed to find similar technical challenges and career growth opportunities in SoCal, because the systems are highly concurrent and operate at scale with a large existing customer base.

Cons: We are still struggling to develop solid development environments. Our stack is varied and complex, and while we make progress in making development easier for ourselves, there is room for a lot of growth in this area.

Fast-growing, profitable. Great people and perks, acceptable salaries.

Front End Engineer • Current Employee

Redwood City, CA

November 2, 2015

Pros: Profitable company with solid growth ahead of it. SendGrid is a world leader in transactional email - receipts, forgot password, etc. We just released a brand-new product to target marketers, which is a higher-volume segment of the total email market, as well as a specialty product for marketing automation (which we expect to pick up speed very fast, as more marketers demand triggered emails for things like shopping cart abandonment or new signups). As a result, they're able to offer excellent perks to employees, and options stand to be valuable in the near term. SendGrid has figured out how to make distributed teams work. We can hire in any of the four major offices, and collaborate over a distance. I'm working with about 300 friendly and helpful coworkers as of this review. Employees really do "walk the walk" of the company's values: hungry, humble, honest, and happy. It's been a pleasure working with my team, and I really appreciate the transparency shown to employees by upper management. Sameer - the current CEO - and the co-founders are all smart, warm, and personable. Senior management hires great people and trusts them to get the job done.

Cons: Salaries are finally catching up to the market, but they weren't always that way. Early employees don't seem to get many chances for advancement, and mid-level management, generally hired from outside, feels a bit green at times. It's a tricky balance; we need experienced managers, but we also need to reward the people who helped build it with opportunities for professional development. This is probably a natural problem for a mid-stage company like ours to have.

Fast-growing, profitable. Great people and perks, acceptable salaries.

Front End Engineer • Current Employee

Redwood City, CA

November 2, 2015

Pros: Profitable company with solid growth ahead of it. SendGrid is a world leader in transactional email - receipts, forgot password, etc. We just released a brand-new product to target marketers, which is a higher-volume segment of the total email market, as well as a specialty product for marketing automation (which we expect to pick up speed very fast, as more marketers demand triggered emails for things like shopping cart abandonment or new signups). As a result, they're able to offer excellent perks to employees, and options stand to be valuable in the near term. SendGrid has figured out how to make distributed teams work. We can hire in any of the four major offices, and collaborate over a distance. I'm working with about 300 friendly and helpful coworkers as of this review. Employees really do "walk the walk" of the company's values: hungry, humble, honest, and happy. It's been a pleasure working with my team, and I really appreciate the transparency shown to employees by upper management. Sameer - the current CEO - and the co-founders are all smart, warm, and personable. Senior management hires great people and trusts them to get the job done.

Cons: Salaries are finally catching up to the market, but they weren't always that way. Early employees don't seem to get many chances for advancement, and mid-level management, generally hired from outside, feels a bit green at times. It's a tricky balance; we need experienced managers, but we also need to reward the people who helped build it with opportunities for professional development. This is probably a natural problem for a mid-stage company like ours to have.

Hands down the best place I've worked

Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee

Pros: Hiring people with the 4H mentality makes it much easier to ensure we're all mature enough to get along even when things go badly. There are lots and lots of perks at the company.

Cons: Management layers weren't really in place very strongly when I worked there, though it was much better by the time I left. This caused a ton of changes (mostly process) while management figured out what to do, but it showed they cared about the employees to do so. But it was pretty jarring for engineers for a while. Much better now, I think.

5.0
Hands down the best place I've worked
Senior Software Engineer • Former Employee
Denver, CO
July 2, 2017
Pros: Hiring people with the 4H mentality makes it much easier to ensure we're all mature enough to get along even when things go badly. There are lots and lots of perks at the company.
Cons: Management layers weren't really in place very strongly when I worked there, though it was much better by the time I left. This caused a ton of changes (mostly process) while management figured out what to do, but it showed they cared about the employees to do so. But it was pretty jarring for engineers for a while. Much better now, I think.

SendGrid SoCal Employee

Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee

January 18, 2017

Pros: The people are 4H: humble, hungry, honest, and happy. I enjoy working with these intelligent and motivated people. You are hard-pressed to find similar technical challenges and career growth opportunities in SoCal, because the systems are highly concurrent and operate at scale with a large existing customer base.

Cons: We are still struggling to develop solid development environments. Our stack is varied and complex, and while we make progress in making development easier for ourselves, there is room for a lot of growth in this area.

5.0
SendGrid SoCal Employee
Senior Software Engineer • Current Employee
Orange, CA
January 18, 2017
Pros: The people are 4H: humble, hungry, honest, and happy. I enjoy working with these intelligent and motivated people. You are hard-pressed to find similar technical challenges and career growth opportunities in SoCal, because the systems are highly concurrent and operate at scale with a large existing customer base.
Cons: We are still struggling to develop solid development environments. Our stack is varied and complex, and while we make progress in making development easier for ourselves, there is room for a lot of growth in this area.

Fast-growing, profitable. Great people and perks, acceptable salaries.

Front End Engineer • Current Employee

Redwood City, CA

November 2, 2015

Pros: Profitable company with solid growth ahead of it. SendGrid is a world leader in transactional email - receipts, forgot password, etc. We just released a brand-new product to target marketers, which is a higher-volume segment of the total email market, as well as a specialty product for marketing automation (which we expect to pick up speed very fast, as more marketers demand triggered emails for things like shopping cart abandonment or new signups). As a result, they're able to offer excellent perks to employees, and options stand to be valuable in the near term. SendGrid has figured out how to make distributed teams work. We can hire in any of the four major offices, and collaborate over a distance. I'm working with about 300 friendly and helpful coworkers as of this review. Employees really do "walk the walk" of the company's values: hungry, humble, honest, and happy. It's been a pleasure working with my team, and I really appreciate the transparency shown to employees by upper management. Sameer - the current CEO - and the co-founders are all smart, warm, and personable. Senior management hires great people and trusts them to get the job done.

Cons: Salaries are finally catching up to the market, but they weren't always that way. Early employees don't seem to get many chances for advancement, and mid-level management, generally hired from outside, feels a bit green at times. It's a tricky balance; we need experienced managers, but we also need to reward the people who helped build it with opportunities for professional development. This is probably a natural problem for a mid-stage company like ours to have.

5.0
Fast-growing, profitable. Great people and perks, acceptable salaries.
Front End Engineer • Current Employee
Redwood City, CA
November 2, 2015
Pros: Profitable company with solid growth ahead of it. SendGrid is a world leader in transactional email - receipts, forgot password, etc. We just released a brand-new product to target marketers, which is a higher-volume segment of the total email market, as well as a specialty product for marketing automation (which we expect to pick up speed very fast, as more marketers demand triggered emails for things like shopping cart abandonment or new signups). As a result, they're able to offer excellent perks to employees, and options stand to be valuable in the near term. SendGrid has figured out how to make distributed teams work. We can hire in any of the four major offices, and collaborate over a distance. I'm working with about 300 friendly and helpful coworkers as of this review. Employees really do "walk the walk" of the company's values: hungry, humble, honest, and happy. It's been a pleasure working with my team, and I really appreciate the transparency shown to employees by upper management. Sameer - the current CEO - and the co-founders are all smart, warm, and personable. Senior management hires great people and trusts them to get the job done.
Cons: Salaries are finally catching up to the market, but they weren't always that way. Early employees don't seem to get many chances for advancement, and mid-level management, generally hired from outside, feels a bit green at times. It's a tricky balance; we need experienced managers, but we also need to reward the people who helped build it with opportunities for professional development. This is probably a natural problem for a mid-stage company like ours to have.

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