I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1+ week. I interviewed at Shmoop (Mountain View, CA) in Apr 2013
Interview
Started with a non-technical phone call to talk about goals and achievements.
Second was an in-person interview, about 2 1/2 hours long. Interviewed with 3 engineers and the CEO. Questions varied in difficulty from the very basic "What is ____?" to some more open-ended "How would you _____?" questions. Overall tests knowledge of basic datastructures, algorithms, and some problem solving skills; nothing difficult, but not trivial.
Lastly was the co-worker referral, a copy of your school transcript (I'd imagine this is limited to new-grads), and a sample of code.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You have two lightbulbs and a building 100 floors tall... find the lowest floor from which you can throw a lightbulb and have it shatter.
The process took 2 months. I interviewed at Shmoop (Mountain View, CA)
Interview
The worst interview process I have ever been a part of.
After applying for the position, a recruiter from LimeRecruits reached out to me.
Did initial phone screening, spoke to CEO, and was told that I should be interviewing with a technical member of their team.
After two weeks of me reaching out to the recruiter from LimeRecruits, I was finally told that I would be invited in for an interview to meet the engineers. Horribly enough, not three days later, I got an email back saying that I was not going to be chosen to move forward.
1. Was never given a technical interview
2. Calls with CEO and Recruiter were always late or rescheduled
Overall unorganized. Misleading recruiter. Thumbs down.
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Shmoop (Mountain View, CA) in Apr 2012
Interview
I wasn't happy with their set up. They have a very small office in an obscure location. To be fair it's a nice building, they have an awesome fountain right in the middle but I could not work in that environment. I couldn't work somewhere mediocre. They weren't professional and didn't have any kind of interview process, the people didn't know what to ask me. The whole atmosphere was uncomfortable and terrible. They had a dog in the office which kept trying to drool over me. I like dogs but that is just unprofessional.
Basically the phone call had no technical questions. I felt like after that everything else was just a waste of my time. If they didn't expect much from me I shouldn't expect much of a challenge or salary.
My best advice would be not to answer recruiters phone calls. They will try to get you interviewed for shitty small companies that could only offer you $50,000/year. Apply at Amazon, Riverbed, Google Palantir, Apple - the usual suspects. You can get at least a 20K signing bonus.