I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Jane Street (New York, NY) in May 2016
Interview
Applied online, next day got an email requesting a technical phone screen. Phone interview was one week later.
Interviewer seemed annoyed and terse from the beginning. Began to introduce himself and described his past work, during intro asked me to explain how compilers work.
Moved on to a technical question. He spelled out a tinyURL link that sent me to an online shared editor, kobra.io. He explained the problem. I asked a clarifying question, then began to jot down a note planning how I'd tackle the solution.
Almost immediately after starting to plan a solution, he warned that I should start coding or I'd spend all my time planning. I said okay, and began to write a trie structure in Python. He said that no candidates had been able to complete a solution with a trie in the interview time and urged me to write a simpler solution. I said okay, and wrote a solution that used a stack and a dictionary.
Finished the solution, found and fixed a bug where I'd typo'd a variable name. I asked if I should begin cleaning up the code and optimizing, possibly implement a faster solution. He said that wouldn't be necessary, asked if I had any questions for him. Asked about the company culture and workflow.
Interview lasted about 45 minutes. Two days later I got an automated email informing me they would continue with other candidates.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Same street fighter question another Glassdoor interview mentioned. Write two functions: register and on_key. Register takes a combination of keys as a string and a name for the combo. On_key takes a single keypress and check if that keypress completes a combo registerd. Given possible inputs Up, Down, Left, Right, A, and B. Registered combos can be of unlimited length.
It was a very quick and painless process. Recruiter very responsive, kind interviewers. High implementation and difficult problems, so failed onsite after 3 interviews and a Question and Answer Session.
Did not pass the initial coding round. I tried to explain my thought in details to the interviewer but failed to translate my thought into code. So far interviewer is very nice.
I applied online. I interviewed at Jane Street (New York, NY)
Interview
My experience interviewing at Jane Street was definitely challenging, but also surprisingly collaborative. Instead of focusing only on whether I could get the right answer quickly, the interviewers were much more interested in how I approached problems and explained my thinking. I worked through a few coding questions involving data structures and algorithms, and there were also some probability-style questions that tested logical reasoning. The interviewers were clearly very sharp, but they were also approachable and encouraged me to talk through my thought process the entire time. When I got stuck, they would sometimes guide me with small hints so we could keep exploring the problem together. Overall, it felt less like a typical high-pressure interview and more like a thoughtful technical conversation with experienced engineers.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
“What is the expected number of coin flips needed to get two heads in a row?”