I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Heap (San Francisco, CA) in May 2018
Interview
1) Phone screen, which included a design question
2) Medium difficulty take-home question
3) All day onsite where you're given a problem for the entire day
Both the phone screen and the technical take home question were great.
However, the onsite was a completely different experience. The interviewer quickly described the question and didn't really help me when I asked questions. In addition, he was very condescending when I was trying to setup the project and run the boilerplate code. When I needed some help getting things running he was really rude and expected that I could just Google everything and figure it out. During an interview, you don't really have time to waste so it was a really stressful process. I was left trying to get the boilerplate code running for an hour.
After about an hour, he came back to check on me to hear my thoughts about the algorithm I had come up with. I explained my ideas and all he said is that it's suboptimal. When I asked if I was on the right track he offered no help and no suggestions. Overall just an arrogant tone. At the end of the day there is a bug bash where you have the opportunity to fix your code.
I've interviewed with 20+ companies ranging from Google, Facebook, Amazon to much smaller companies. All of my previous experiences were positive whether or not I got an offer. I think Heap looks for a certain type of candidate. One that can code out a complex algorithm with no help gets things running. As another interviewer pointed out this probably leads to a homogenous workplace.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1) Phone interview that involves designing a large scale backend system (Similar to other design questions)
2) Take home coding assignment (Algorithmic)
3) Entire day coding assignment to design autocomplete. Another glassdoor review already pointed out the question
I applied through other source. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Heap (San Francisco, CA)
Interview
Skipped resume review via interviewing.io; which by itself said great things about diversity in the company. Clever technical questions; but the last one (about databases) kind of dragged out. Database-related-experience wasn't in either their job description or my resume, but they kept on it well past the point where I ran out of prior knowledge to use and examples to list; just spending >10 minutes poking without hints. Confusing ending to an otherwise pleasant process.
Overall, this process was very thorough:
- initial interview
- coding interview
- virtual on-site:
- - 2 more coding interviews
- - systems design
- - product demo
- - pm interview
- - values interview
I learned a lot about the company, product, and development process, and I had a chance to talk with a lot of people. Everyone was really friendly and smart. It took a lot of time, but I think it was worth it.
However, I was a little miffed about how they handled my cohort. After completing the virtual on-site (and spending a lot of time on this process), I was told that they had already filled all the current engineer reqs, and they would have to ask for more money to potentially hire ahead for next year. I felt like they should have finished the interview process with all candidates before proceeding to make offers, and it wasn’t fair to those of us who interviewed after they filled all their reqs. In the end, they told me I didn’t quite make it, which is fine, and I guess I’ll never know about the details. I just felt a little shorted that they made a bunch of offers the week before I finished my six interview on-site.
Despite that, I thought it was a great company with really smart, friendly people. Seems like it would be a great place to work.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I was going to write a question here but eh, that seems a little unfair to Heap.
- Regular Behavior questions
- Matrix exercise
It was an average experience, you should practice the kind of questions I just put above. This Glassdoor rule of 50 word minimum is really stupid.