Backend Developer Interview Experience - San Francisco, California
January 1, 2018
Positive ExperienceNo Offer
Process
The first round is an OA, which is easily passable if you prepared well.
The second round is a Skype interview. The first part covers basic web development knowledge, such as RESTful APIs, SQL indexing, and the difference between stateless and stateful. The coding portion involves a question similar to graph topological sorting.
The onsite interviews consisted of four rounds, almost without breaks. They were very similar to the Skype interview, with the addition of designing prototypes for functions, including relational database design. The coding was not difficult if you had practiced heaps, graphs, and backtracking. However, I performed poorly on one question: the LCA of an N-ary tree. I attempted to use DFS to solve it but did not handle the return values well. The correct answer, provided by the interviewer, involved using BFS.
Questions
LCA of N-ary tree
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Interview Statistics
The following metrics were computed from 1 interview experience for the Yelp Backend Developer role in San Francisco, California.
Success Rate
0%
Pass Rate
Yelp's interview process for their Backend Developer roles in San Francisco, California is extremely selective, failing the vast majority of engineers.
Experience Rating
Positive100%
Neutral0%
Negative0%
Candidates reported having very good feelings for Yelp's Backend Developer interview process in San Francisco, California.
Yelp Work Experiences
5.0
Great place to work
Backend Developer • Current Employee
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
October 18, 2024
Pros: Good benefits
Competitive salary
Work from home
Cons: It is difficult to grow with the company.
4.0
Great company to work for as an engineer, but some things need to change
Software Engineer • Current Employee
San Francisco, California, United States
March 19, 2013
Pros: It's in the city.
Engineers are self-directed, and management is horizontal. Engineers are friendly, have a strong sense of humor, and are happy. The company thoroughly has faith that you're self-driven and will get your stuff done. This is a big gamble, since some engineers may take advantage of this, but from my experience, most engineers still work hard and are dedicated to the success of the company. They're liberal in terms of working from home and coming in whenever you want to.
There are unique opportunities available in specific areas as this company continues to grow rapidly, especially for engineers interested in:
* Search
* Spam detecting
* Machine learning
* Data mining
Cons: The awkward division between sales and engineering, which is obvious by reading other reviews. The culture and goals of each are completely different. They might as well be two companies. None of this gets explained to you.
Yelp is a sad place for designers or design-minded folk, at least for the time being. Yelp hires very few real designers and leaves most design work to product managers, who typically only have a technical background.
Being a public company forces product to give priority to short-term revenue over building great products. For example, banner ads are all over the site, and many of these ads are not only ugly but directly contradict Yelp's mission of connecting people with local businesses (e.g., Taco Bell).
In many ways, Yelp is very corporate, as much as they would hate to admit it. Terribly inefficient workflows and outdated internal tools are maintained despite constant griping. Important decisions often go unquestioned. Quality is not job one. The politics of priority or "MVP" prevent good ideas from even seeing the light of day.
1.0
Very bad experience
Software Engineer • Current Employee
San Francisco, California, United States
June 17, 2015
Pros: 1. Competitive salary
2. There are some really fantastic engineers
Cons: 1. Fear-driven work culture
2. Disillusioned leadership
3. Terrible work hours, zero work-life balance
4. No regular lunches like in other companies
- 5.0Great place to workBackend Developer • Current EmployeeToronto, Ontario, CanadaOctober 18, 2024Pros: Good benefits Competitive salary Work from homeCons: It is difficult to grow with the company.
- 4.0Great company to work for as an engineer, but some things need to changeSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesMarch 19, 2013Pros: It's in the city. Engineers are self-directed, and management is horizontal. Engineers are friendly, have a strong sense of humor, and are happy. The company thoroughly has faith that you're self-driven and will get your stuff done. This is a big gamble, since some engineers may take advantage of this, but from my experience, most engineers still work hard and are dedicated to the success of the company. They're liberal in terms of working from home and coming in whenever you want to. There are unique opportunities available in specific areas as this company continues to grow rapidly, especially for engineers interested in: * Search * Spam detecting * Machine learning * Data miningCons: The awkward division between sales and engineering, which is obvious by reading other reviews. The culture and goals of each are completely different. They might as well be two companies. None of this gets explained to you. Yelp is a sad place for designers or design-minded folk, at least for the time being. Yelp hires very few real designers and leaves most design work to product managers, who typically only have a technical background. Being a public company forces product to give priority to short-term revenue over building great products. For example, banner ads are all over the site, and many of these ads are not only ugly but directly contradict Yelp's mission of connecting people with local businesses (e.g., Taco Bell). In many ways, Yelp is very corporate, as much as they would hate to admit it. Terribly inefficient workflows and outdated internal tools are maintained despite constant griping. Important decisions often go unquestioned. Quality is not job one. The politics of priority or "MVP" prevent good ideas from even seeing the light of day.
- 1.0Very bad experienceSoftware Engineer • Current EmployeeSan Francisco, California, United StatesJune 17, 2015Pros: 1. Competitive salary 2. There are some really fantastic engineersCons: 1. Fear-driven work culture 2. Disillusioned leadership 3. Terrible work hours, zero work-life balance 4. No regular lunches like in other companies
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