I applied online via the Yandex website for a position in St. Petersburg.

After several days, I received an email from Yandex for the first technical interview.

The first interview was quite easy: questions about sorting algorithms I knew, the two-sum array problem, median of three numbers, etc.

After about a week, I received an email for the second technical interview (via Skype).

This one was relatively hard, with three engineers asking questions about C/C++/STL, multi-threading, and algorithms.

Questions included:

• Exception in a constructor
• If destructors of base classes are called
• Finding if a singly-linked list contains a loop
• Making random3() using random2()
• Writing a smart-pointer class
• A programming question about multi-threading and lock-free implementation.

Just a few days later, I was invited for a face-to-face interview in St. Petersburg.

There, I was tasked with implementing an algorithm using STL (no internet access, obviously) in 4 hours. It was quite hard, though the algorithm itself wasn't that complicated; it was mainly the feeling of time pressure and trying to code very fast.

After about a week, I got an email from HR stating they wanted to work with me, but my salary expectations differed significantly from theirs. Consequently, I had to turn down the offer.

Altogether, it was a positive experience, with friendly HR and interviewers.

1. There were some questions about Python and SQL that I did not expect, as I applied for a C++ developer position.
2. I got confused by a simple question about the endianness of x86 CPUs.
3. I mixed up rvalue semantics in another C++ question.