It started after a recruiter reached out to me after I submitted my resume into the GHC (Grace Hopper Conference) resume bank. They invited a few of us in the Boston area to a nice dinner, during which two female engineers tried hard to sell the company to us.

Then, there was an online assessment. The questions are easily found online.

After that, I received notice very quickly that they'd like to schedule a 30-minute in-person interview with me at GHC, where I would code on the computer alongside an engineer. That one was the hardest problem throughout the process, regarding regular expressions. I was only able to get a brute-force solution with a lot of hints from the interviewer. Afterwards, I was really certain I had failed, so I didn't think much about it.

Two weeks later, I received notice that Two Sigma would like to schedule a phone interview with me. I was surprised, but went on with the interview anyways. I prepared extensively for this one, and it paid off. The interviewer asked standard questions that can easily be found online.

Then again, very quickly, I received notice that I had moved on to the final round. At this point, I was exhausted by their interview process, but I decided to go anyways because I got to see their NYC office.

It was a very last-minute trip, so I was pretty frazzled. They paid for airfare and hotel. The hotel was quirky.

I went in for the interview the next day. On a whiteboard, I saw nine names. I knew they weren't going to hire nine interns, so they knew that some of us would be sent home with no offers. I also remember multiple people saying throughout the process, 'Our internship is more competitive than our full-time job because there are fewer slots available; please try full-time if you don't get an internship.'

The first interview went okay. I had to code in a new editor on a new computer, which slowed me down. It was also uncomfortable to have someone else look over my shoulder while I was coding. I had a few bugs in the program, which my interviewer corrected. He seemed happy at the end.

The second interview didn't go too well; I wasn't able to solve the problem. It was a tricky data manipulation problem, not at all related to algorithms. I think I could have done it if I were given more time and space to think. But maybe they were expecting people to be able to solve it under pressure in an hour.

After that, I was taken to lunch with two engineers, one of whom tried hard to sell me the company, constantly comparing it to 'Google/Facebook,' etc. I didn't have the heart to tell them that I already had an offer from Facebook at that point.

When I returned from lunch, a recruiter I had never met before sat me down and told me that I was not selected. I was a bit sad, but grateful that they told me so quickly so I could get on my way. I ended up shopping at some boutiques in the afternoon.

Thankfully, they gave me an umbrella as swag; otherwise, I would have drowned in the rain.

I emailed the recruiter a week later about feedback and reimbursement. No response. I don't think I'm getting reimbursed.

tl;dr: Excessively long process (I had 4 screens for an internship; I only did 2 rounds at Facebook and got the offer within a week). Overall, nice recruiting process.

Questions about my resume.

Questions about dynamic programming, probability, and data manipulation.