An Uber recruiter contacted me via LinkedIn and scheduled a non-technical interview. They mostly talked about my background and things I work on at my current job.

Next, they scheduled a technical telephone interview. The interview pattern was pretty standard. I wrote programs on a shared screen. There were two simple programming questions (language of my choice) and one for system design. The interviewer also asked me questions about what I work on and explained what their team works on. I received a response almost immediately that I had cleared the interview. They asked for dates to fly to their HQ.

Uber does not book travel arrangements for candidates; you are expected to book your own flights, hotel, and any other necessities.

Each interview lasts for about 45 minutes, and there are approximately five interviews in total. There is a lunch break with the team for about half an hour, but otherwise, the interviews are back-to-back.

The interview almost always started with questions about the most interesting project I worked on, which lasted for about half of the interview.

Then, there was a programming question. The unique aspect of this part was that you could use your own laptop and any Integrated Development Environment (IDE) of your choice. You were also permitted to Google for information—obviously not for algorithms, but for programming questions that might require additional input.

I chose Eclipse. The advantage of this setup was not having to memorize functions or syntax, thanks to Intellisense. The drawback, as I saw it, was that your program had to work by the end of the interview. You were given between 10 to 25 minutes to complete it. Writing your code faster allowed more time for debugging.

The interviewers were very pleasant to talk to: friendly and not at all arrogant.

I was happy with the overall interview experience, but the scheduling process was quite stressful. While this is not a forum for complaints, be prepared for this: They did not send me a confirmation until two days before the interview, and I had actually lost hope. I had to book my travel and fly across the country in a day, which was a bit stressful.

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