I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Clearwell Systems (Mountain View, CA) in July 2010
Interview
The process consisted of a phone screen, 2 separate onsite visits consisting of interviews with engineers, and 1 final visit to interview with CTO and CEO. The technical interviews were okay, but I don't get why a 100+ person company still needs to have every candidate screened by the CEO - ever heard of delegating tasks and trusting the opinions of your coworkers?
Anyway, before I left the final interview their recruiter finally had a concrete discussion with me regarding compensation prospects with me, and it turned out they'd have a hard time even matching my current salary. The equity award would also be stingy. Wait a minute - couldn't you have saved me time by disclosing this situation earlier on? Well, later on he called me and said they would not be moving forward with an offer at all, partly due to inability to match my salary expectations - even though everyone I talked to did like me.
Here's some advice - in order to attract top talent, it is insufficient to claim to be a great place to work. You need to put something material forward. If you are not willing to do this, please save yourself and candidates some time by disclosing that your compensation package is mediocre.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Write a method that reverses a singly linked list.
The process took 5 months. I interviewed at Clearwell Systems (Mountain View, CA) in Aug 2011
Interview
I went through the technical phone interview where they asked mostly Java knowledge questions, and then a small coding question.
Then I was invited onsite where I was interviewed by 4 senior engineers. They asked about my experience, and also algorithm questions - linked list, designing a system, concurrency, immutability, priority queues, etc.
All of them seemed to like my answers, and so I was invited for the next stage - meeting with the Senior Director, Development and VP of Technology. The Senior Director of Development was not very nice. He was doubting and rejecting my every answer, which I considered to be rude. I was "left with a bitter taste in my mouth" after that interview. A week later I received a rejection email. I just don't understand why they don't trust their senior developers who interviewed and liked me, and why 1 person decides whether to hire or not.
I applied online. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at Clearwell Systems (Mountain View, CA) in Sept 2010
Interview
I have applied online and had a phone screening. It was simple, typical OOP, DB, indexing questions. The day after, I was invited for an on-site interview. I met 6-7 people, including HR, a couple of engineers, a principal engineer. They asked expected questions about Java, OO, software design etc. After the interview, I was contacted by and had a scheduled interview with CEO. It seems a good environment but they hiring procedure was not organized, I assume they don't know what they need precisely. The benefit package is really humble for this kind of corporation.
