I applied online and received a call within the next day to schedule a time for a phone interview. They gave me a conference number to call. So I called in about 5 minutes early and I was the first to join the conference. I waited about 20 minutes and I'm still the only one that is in the conference. To confirm the date and time, I hung up and called HR and asked if the meeting time was correct. It was right and apparently the Software Development Manager that I was supposed to meet with forgot about the interview.
The HR apologized and rescheduled another interview. The phone interview was as expected and they brought me in for an in person interview. For the in person interview, I met with the Software Development Manager and the Software Development Director. Topics covered include my experience, typical Java questions, was quite easy. Then a few more people joined in on the from the phone and I spent the most time with the Senior Developer. She asked questions that I did not expect coming from a Senior Developer. All of her questions are about method names from specific J2EE classes. I answered them but after the 3rd question about methods and even the method signature, I was starting to get frustrated and commented that I don't memorize the Java API and knowing method names and parameters does not make a person a good programmer. Honestly, what does it prove...that I can memorize an API? I expected questions such as scaling and handling concurrency issues. After that she didn't have anything else to add and was quiet for the rest of the interview.
In the last stage of the interview , they asked what my expected salary was, how I came up with that range and why I think I deserve that amount. The range that I indicated was the average range for this position and it's the first time that I've been asked this kind of question in an interview.
Finally, the last question they asked as "How many windows are there in this city?" . There is no right answer for this question - they just want to see how you think and come up with a number. I white boarded my solution and went into detail.
In the end, I was not impressed with Active Network . I didn't get the offer but I would have rejected them if I had. Nobody showed up for the phone interview and the Software Development Manager did not apologize for not attending. I actually took time off work and attend the interview and they didn't show up. Furthermore, I wouldn't want to work for a company that interviews candidates by asking questions on API method names.
