I recently had an enjoyable technical interview experience with a large enterprise tech company. Compared to other technical interviews which focus on your ability to memorize leet code solutions. This one was focused on me as an individual, and how my past work experience related to the tools and tech I’ve become proficient with. When it came to coding, everyone was focused on my problem solving process as a whole and how I talked through it, any shortcomings I saw in my implementations, and how would I address them, either now or later. There was 4 rounds spread out over one month, but active time from first screening to receiving a verdict was ~11 hours.

The Rounds

  1. HR Phone Call (1 hour): Work background, education, and work status
  2. Hiring Manager Phone Call (1 hour): Background of company, their organization, and the role
  3. Initial Screening Phone Call (1 hour): Computer architecture (stack vs heap, process vs program, multi-threading), What Happens When, and some generic “Explain a time when…”
  4. Final Screening via Zoom and coderpad.io (8 hours): Two coding interviews, a “Bar Tender” (their spin on Bar Raiser), and one last coding interview

Overall, though I didn’t receive an offer, it was an enjoyable experience and I hope more teams will conduct their technical interviews like this in the near future.