Had a telephonic interview for L5A position at Uber. I took 3 weeks to prepare to revisit and grind my leetcode lists. Did tons of problems since I heard they ask hard questions. But to my surprise, he didn’t ask a single coding question, I didn’t even open codesignal! He started off the discussion with a very simple problem and then gradually built upon it layer by layer to the point where sometimes I realized how shallow my understanding was in areas I thought I knew a lot about. I didn’t completely bomb it but definitely wasn’t a flawless where you’d answer every single question. I might not make it but it’s refreshing to know that there are some, who take real interviews rather than just a stupid LC quiz. The reason I’m saying that is because the way he conducted the interview, I can’t possibly think of a way someone can game it. We covered so much of computer science in one hour from various different directions. At times, he’d even explain concepts on a whiteboard if I do not know and from there he’d probe how I can think of a solution. This fucking never happened in any other interview!!! By the time interview ended, I had so many things that I know I should read more about. And for that, I have a mad respect for him ✊🏻 TC: 140, yoe: 5.5 Update: Didn’t make it. Didn’t get any feedback but I guess it’s because of the lack of depth in my understanding of some areas of distributed systems. Couple of times I found myself hitting a wall and tried to answer based on what would I do since I didn’t have much knowledge about those things. I still believe anyone with good enough critical thinking would be able to derive a way to solve such scenarios. I guess I fell short there. I just wasn’t ready for such interview and basically was on a surprise test (I was told I’ll get coding exercise :/) Overall, I’m glad I spent an hour, would definitely interview again with the same team with hopefully similar kind of interview. Edit: First of all, thanks a lot for your wonderful comments. I loved each and every feedback, thankful to this community ❤️ I think I shouldn’t have excluded my experience from abroad prior to my masters. I see a lot of comments about it, rightfully so. If I include that, it becomes 5.5 years plus about a year long internship during masters, but in US, I basically started off from 0 after masters. Hence updating it, although it looks quite disconnected from TC that I make rn lol. Hope you all have a great weekend and a happy new year :)
Sounds like you did really well
I honestly don’t know but I honestly don’t mind if I get rejected. A great intellectual discussion was totally worth it
@OP: One of the best comments I've seen on Blind. Actually, one of the best comments I've read anywhere in so long. Best wishes and great respect for both of you and the interviewer. You will go places dude/gal! 🚀 🙂 Try to let them know your thoughts and reactions to the experience if possible. I'd personally hire you immediately seeing this reaction from you! (not saying they will 🙂 just letting you know I would! Keep up the perfect attitude!)
More people should do interviews like this. I had a similar experience in one of the on-site at Adobe.
Thank you! 🙏🏼
Make sure you say something like this in a thank you note to the interviewer.
This is how I typically do it too. It takes 10 mins to know if the person is bs’ing or not. Sometimes as an interviewer, I also learn how much I don’t know.
Way to go. I honestly can’t think why more people are not doing interviews like this.
To those that have done this do you have an example question of how this would look?
+1. Would love to know how would you judge a candidate and determine the outcome.
I agree it requires a LOT of investment and prep in order to also maintain fairness, consistency, and less bias among candidates. Yet .. When done good, it's much better to assess for problem solving, thinking skills (critical, creative, analytical, ...), and what the candidate might be capable of even if they did not have a similar prior experience (like when the interviewer explained the concept when the candidate did not have it already).
Had similar experience with a Google interviever last month. It was so fun, we started with very basic stuff to various trade off, some Probability, combinations - permutations to finally graph theory.
What level?
I interview like this.
I as well, I would rather have a good tech conversation than LC questions that likely aren’t used in everyday duties.
Do u mind sharing an example?
Can you share the questions during the interview by any chance? No, I’m not going to game it
I can’t tell the exact path I went down but think about very simple problem like searching for a certain set of values within another set. Then build on it applying constraints like what if there are duplicates, huge list, etc… now this is a very trivial task, however he drove me to so many places where I was challenged on some very low level aspects, like hashing, performance, multithreading, probabilistic distribution and more. Every time I solve a problem, he’d make it even tougher until I hit the limit. I feel you can’t prepare for such interviews before a month since it judges your true understanding and I feel that comes with experience as well as passionate reading and following the field in general. I hope it helps you to stimulate your though process too. Cheers:)
How did you manage to get an interview for L5A with just 2.5 YOE? Doesn’t L5A map to senior? Did the recruiter not push back and recommend L4?
Location? If bay area you boutta get a yuge tc jump
Lol true if I make it.