Reddit Staff Software Engineer interview questions

Typical tech interview process. If not slightly long. After HR and technical screening, completed architectural and cross functional interviews. Standard conversations, you just need familiarity with the full stack picture of managing a web app. Also did two live programming interview challenges which boiled down to transforming a data structure and writing vanilla JavaScript for a pretty directionless example UI. Nothing real-world related or very valid for evaluating actual engineering capabilities. Just basically the FAANG mentality of hiring people who are good at 30 minutes of speed programming some throw away code. Tempting to say it was a negative experience due to the irrelevant content, but everyone was pleasant, and this is not uncommon. So just neutral I guess.

The process took about a week or so. The whole thing was 4 interviews: Coding Interview, Architecture Interview, Behavioral Interview, Culture Fit Interview. I did not move forward past the coding interview even though it went really well and the interview ended with my interviewer saying that I definitely passed. But I know this happens sometimes for all kinds of reasons. The thing that made this a negative experience for me is that TA seemed like they were only considering me out of a sense of obligation because I listed someone higher up as a connection of mine in my application. Our interactions felt rushed and insincere, like they didn't want to waste any more time than they had to on me, and the rejection email I received after the coding interview seemed more about absolving them of any further expectation of responsiveness. The way it was written was confusing since they made it seem like it was based on my interviewer's feedback, but they didn't specify at all what that feedback was so for all I know they could have just lied about it. I followed up asking for clarification since I received positive feedback at the end of the interview but I never heard back. I know hiring teams have their hands full since the market is packed with good Engineers right now but for me this was the difference between a positive interview with just a disappointing outcome and a negative interview experience overall.