I applied through a recruiter. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Compass (New York, NY) in Jan 2019
Interview
Basically what everyone else has said until now. I feel so bad writing this. The recruiters are super nice. Most of the people you meet are nice. But then the few rotten apples are so bad that it really leaves you with a bad taste. I would have given it a higher rating, but they just do not have checks and balances in place.
For starters, the sheer volume of interviews is bad. It just shows that the company does not care about your time. 2 phone screens 1 hr each and a 5 hr on site interview is uncalled for. Really. Almost every candidate has complained about them having arrogant self proclaimed :superstars: on the team, but they do nothing to add accountability to the process. There are many ways this can be avoided. Have a group panel interview or interview in pairs to add accountability. Or reduce the number of rounds if you cannot stop renegade interviewers who seek validation from their position. You are tarnishing your own brand doing this.
This interview is extremely humiliating and bad. One interviewer actually said to me "i should not be telling you this". Sure I was not able to answer your esoteric question on dynamic programming in the moment. Happens. Dont have to show this superiority and arrogance just because you applied before me.
A lot can be done here. Send a project to ppl to implement. And check the project. many tech companies are doing that. Why give ammunition to problematic folks that you cannot control?
An advice to everyone, they dont value your time. Dont waste it talking to arrogant ppl
Interview questions [4]
Question 1
Coderpad Phone Screen 1 Some variant of Parse a text and display
On Site 2 - write the code for a load balancer. You can add a node, delete a node or pick a node at random. All have to be constant time and balancing should be even
I applied through university. I interviewed at Compass (Bellevue, WA)
Interview
Pretty chill. Three rounds of debugging, technical (leetcode), and behavioral, which was more like high-level with AI assistance. The values did not come up very much while going through the interview process.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Had us do an AI round about forms and matching things.
Debugging, technical, then behavioral. I had been given two language options for the debugging portion (Java or Python) during the phone interview then when I went to the onsite there seemed to be a miscommunication because the interview said I could use JS since I was applying as a frontend engineer. The debugging was pretty doable, the behavioral was odd but fine.
The interview process felt chaotic and poorly organized. What I was asked in the interview didn’t align with what HR told me to expect, and the interview started late. The lack of alignment between HR and the interviewer made it feel like the company overall may be chaotic. Afterward, HR’s follow-ups were generic and robotic, and the employer also mentioned layoffs, which added to the uncertainty. Overall, it didn’t feel worth the effort.