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If you've ever done an onsite interview, you'd understand what a gruelling experience 6 hours of whiteboard problem solving really is. The worst part, of course
by ppeetteerr 8y ago
If you've ever done an onsite interview, you'd understand what a gruelling experience 6 hours of whiteboard problem solving really is. The worst part, of course, is that these exercises are completely irrelevant to the work most candidates will do on a day to day. That alone feels like a joke. Not to mention that you will be judged by people who also don't care about how well you balance a tree but are forced to anyway due to the archaic method of evaluating technical candidates.
- romanhn 8y agoWhat does this have to do with Stripe? They're pretty clear on this point: "Our questions seek to understand how people approach real world problems, rather than testing for esoteric skills you might demonstrate on a whiteboard."
- ppeetteerr 8y agoI'm referring to the long interview process, where there are two phone interviews and a day-long in person interview. It sounds like Stripe are trying to break the cycle of irrelevant questions during interviews, but it doesn't change the fact that a day-long interview is exhausting.
- sonnyblarney 8y agoWhat one does on a whiteboard is not very esoteric.
- patio11 8y ago(I work at Stripe and, while I don’t do engineering interviews, have strong views on the topic, which may or may not be equivalent to our views. I believe the following is substantially accurate regarding factual representations.) We don’t do whiteboard interviews for coding. If we have a coding interview, candidates can do it on their choice of their machine or a loaner machine from us with one of a few environments installed. Most interview loops have approximately two 45 minute coding interviews. The other interviews might focus on (depending on job/seniority/etc) design, architecture, product sense, industry knowledge, communication style, etc. (Each interview tests one cluster of skills against a rubric, as explained in the linked article.)
- ppeetteerr 8y agoThanks for clarifying mate. It's nice to hear your company is changing the status quo.
- ummonk 8y agoThis actually seems to be the norm at most startups. Coding exercises on laptop, and design and behavioral interviews. I’ve mostly seen algorithm / data structure questions at megacorps, which are probably too big with too much inertia to quickly reform their processes.
- sigi45 8y agoAt least for Google i have to only hit the same bar as everyone else and will get an offer. In all other companies i have to hit team specific bars.
- julianozen 8y agoI actually recently interviewed at Stripe (did not receive an offer) and though the day was long, Stripe question’s were very fair and relevant to the job. This was true from my first phone call to all my onsite questions. I was very impressed by the preparation they had put into their interview questions. So if you work at Stripe and are reading this, good work improving interviewing process
- digaozao 8y agoCan you give examples of the questions?
- julianozen 8y agoSorry! Unfortunately I don’t think that’s be fair to them or other candidates. To be honest, I’m not even sure how they’d interview me again. It seems like it’d be a lot of work to have multiple versions of their interviews and at this point I know the answers to everything they showed me