I was contacted by a recruiter via LinkedIn who was looking for a backend developer. I informed her that wasn't my specialty, but if they were looking for , I'd be happy to talk to them. She passed me off to another recruiter, who set me up with a call with the hiring manager.

The call with the hiring manager mostly covered non-technical topics, largely about how my specialty might fit in at Uber. After that, I had an onsite interview scheduled.

The onsite was a technically rigorous interview with three sessions; it reminded me of the Google-style interview process. There was some whiteboard coding, lots of discussions about how my specialty could fit in at Uber, and a lot of sysadmin-style technology questions. Everyone I met was really pleasant and very smart.

I got a call just under a week later saying that I had done well but they weren't convinced that I had demonstrated sufficient software engineering skills (outside my specialty). They asked if I could do a take-home coding test. I finished the test in a handful of hours over two evenings and got it back to them. From the sounds of things, the code test normally happens before the onsite interview. A few days after that, I heard that they wanted to make an offer.

At this point, I was also waiting for an offer from another company and told them so, asking for some time. The recruiter was happy to give me time to consider other offers and went through the offer in some detail. The offer was a good (but not amazing) salary plus stock options. The stock options were worth almost as much as the salary at the present valuation of the company (according to the recruiter).

The story takes an unexpected detour here, as my other offer is delayed due to problems at the other company. The recruiter was very understanding but grew a little frustrated as the delay turned into a multiple-week saga. Eventually, the other company made an offer that had a similar salary component but a much larger equity component. It was a hard choice, but I was more interested in the market segment of the other company, so I declined Uber's offer.

Everyone I met at Uber was great, and I would have been delighted to work there.