LinkedIn Site Reliability Engineer interview questions

The initial communications were through a recruiter that works for LinkedIn. They contacted me about the job offer and we moved on to interviews. I interviewed with an engineer who did a very high-level asking of questions related to web architecture and how I would go about scaling X or Y. It was not very technical, although you were encouraged to speak your mind about technical topics. Based on the feedback received by that interview we moved on the another phone interview that was a programming interview. You were allowed to pick a language (I picked python) and they asked you 4 questions. Each question built on the other questions and it was a timed interview (60 minutes). The questions you were asked were taken straight out of CS 101 text books; given input, if input is divisible by 2 do X, if divisible by 6 do Y, if divisible by both do Z, else print something. Interestingly, because I haven't done any of these "simple" coding problems for upwards of 10 years, I found this portion of the interview the most difficult. For me it was difficult because these questions just are not what you come across in the real world. The majority of the code things I do today involve fixing bugs here and there and monkey patching code to make it work. Also, you typically have some context and foresight into a problem before you start coding. Being dropped a simple 1 + 2 question is nothing you'd ever encounter working in the real world; it's all academic as far as I'm concerned. I felt like I failed the programming interview, but surprisingly, I got a call back saying they wanted to do an on-site interview. They flew me out to Mountain View and I spent a full day with a number of their engineers going through what they called "modules". This is where it got interesting. I took special care to look at their culture. I noticed that the building is very quiet, there is not a lot of personal "schwag" hanging around people's areas. Not a lot of smiling engineers...curious. The modules included you having semi-technical one-on-one interviews with an engineer. There were some engineers that were VERY technical and weren't much interested in the chitchat that can happen where you talk about what you might currently be working on. The easiest module was the "lunch" module where you ...well...ate lunch, haha. I was expecting this to be a group thing though and instead it was just a you + 1 engineer who ate at the cafeteria. The engineer was the only one that I really "liked" after meeting them all, but still it was a one-to-one interaction. I was really hoping for a group effort. Throughout the WHOLE on-site interview process I got the sinking feeling that individuality trumps groups at LinkedIn. This bums me out because I currently operate in a fairly strong group position and if I am moving to a new position where I am more isolated, I really don't want that. Also, its so quiet. Creepy quiet. Like none of the engineers talk to each other. My current position there is ALWAYS something going on and a lot more background noise to remind you that "you're around people". I didn't get that feeling from LinkedIn. After the interview I just went back and cooled off in the hotel before my flight left the next day. Because of the 2 hour time difference, it was a good idea to plan for staying 3-ish days; 1 to get there, 1 to interview and 1 to leave.