Netflix Senior Software Engineer interview questions

I was interviewed for Netflix for a Senior Software Engineer position in Los Gatos, California. The First round was with the recruiter, basic behavioral questions. Recruiter has really good technical knowledge and was able to answer most of my project related questions. Setup a call with the hiring manager in a week. Hiring Manager round was technical too. Lasted for 40 minutes (the manager joined 10 minutes late). Basic questions about background, interest in the role, project description. I received a take-home project to be written in any JVM based programming language you like. I was able to complete the task in 4 hours and sent it. I did not attach the driver program to execute the code, however, I attached some test cases and a ReadMe file. The manager has set up a code review session after a couple of days and rejected me in the next four minutes for not having a proper package structure for Src and Test files and for not having a driver file. Not a single line of code was reviewed. It is sad that I was rejected because of not having a proper package structure. In any other company, people only care about the logic and not the ceremonies of the code. I was disappointed with this interview process. Always the driver script/program and follow the package structure. Time does not matter.

There was a technical phone screen and then an onsite round. The onsite round was 50% technical and 50% culture. I would say the technical part was not the hardest - it looks like they're trying to find people who would fit well into their cult. Unlike Google or other companies that don't hire people that easily (and consequently don't fire people easily), Netflix seems like the place that will hire people more easily (by looking at the culture fit), because their culture also allows fast turn around with firing employees who are not performing well. Now if you really really want the offer, read the culture deck very carefully, and try to relate it with your personal and professional experiences so you can speak confidently about these things when asked.