In my opinion, Yahoo is extremely disorganized. There seems to be little trust from higher-ups, and from my experience, no one appears to know what is going on. This is especially true if you are applying to a team that was part of a recently acquired startup. Higher-ups seem to have little trust or faith in their hiring managers' ability to pick candidates. If you are a good engineer, I would suggest trying other tech companies. I applied to Yahoo in July 2015 and they managed to waste two months of my life.

Here is my story:

I received a phone call from one of their hiring managers a few days after I applied. He asked me some general technical questions, which I answered. He then scheduled a second technical phone screen with one of his engineers for the following week. They called me on time, and we conducted the second technical phone interview. The challenge was to code a simple JavaScript game with another engineer watching. After I completed that, I was invited for an on-site interview. At this point, I got in touch with a recruiter who asked me what day would work best for me. After I gave her my preferred schedule, she organized my on-site interview for the following week, without even double-checking with me.

I didn't have anything scheduled for that date, so I figured she probably confused one Friday with another. Anyway, I showed up for the on-site and was interviewed by five engineers. This was the most pleasant part of the process. The engineers I spoke with were friendly, knowledgeable, and professional. There were two coding questions and three design-related ones. I answered every single question to the best of my knowledge, and the people interviewing me seemed happy.

After the interview was done, I met with the recruiter responsible for recruiting for the team I was interviewing for. This person was different from the woman I originally spoke with for the on-site interview. He took me out to URLs (Yahoo's cafeteria) and told me the interviewers were happy with my performance and there was a high chance of my application moving forward to the hiring committee. He then told me he was an amazing recruiter and that he had never had anyone rejected by the hiring committee after he was done with their offer proposal. He then gave me his personal phone number and told me he would call me soon.

A week later, he called me and informed me that the feedback from everyone was positive and that Yahoo would move my application forward to the hiring committee. He mentioned this would take some time, as higher-ups and, more specifically, Marissa Mayer, had to sign off on every new hire. I was told I could expect to hear from them in two weeks.

Then I noticed the position I had applied for was being advertised again on LinkedIn. I called the recruiter and asked him, "How is the process on my application coming along?" He literally yelled at me and said, "I'm your goddamn recruiter, I don't process applications." Then he said, "I will call you later."

"We are going to need another technical phone interview." "Why do we need another interview?" I asked him. I had gone through two phone screens and a full day of on-site interviews with "highly positive feedback," according to him. I am currently employed and cannot keep taking time off to conduct more interviews. He said, "This is normal, and one-third of candidates have to go through it."

We set up a technical phone interview. I received the call, and we conducted the interview. The person interviewing me was professional and knowledgeable but had no idea why he was interviewing me. He stated they called him yesterday and told him he needed to interview someone. He asked me two general coding questions, which I answered correctly. He seemed happy with the result and hung up.

At this point, I knew there was no reason to call the recruiter because he had no interest in talking to me. However, the hiring manager who originally contacted me was always prompt and friendly in his responses. So, I emailed him and asked if we were done. The recruiter called me ten minutes later and informed me that I did not perform well on the last technical phone interview and that we were not going to move forward with an offer.

I was fairly disappointed when I heard that, even though I knew it was coming. In my opinion, the last, out-of-nowhere phone interview was not to gauge my abilities as an engineer. It was for the hiring committee to sink my application without having to tell the seven other people who interviewed me, "We don't trust your judgment, and have no faith in your ability to form a team."

Anyway, it is now October 29th, 2015. I have a feeling I will look back at this in a few months (if not weeks) and see it as a blessing in disguise.

General algorithm and data structure questions