I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Spotify (Somerville, MA) in Feb 2017
Interview
Started with a recruiter phone call, very friendly person, we scheduled a coding interview later. The coding interview was very open ended and they wanted to see what kind of questions do you ask when making assumptions and then solving the question. I was invited to the on site interview later. 4 rounds 1 hour each
1) Programming Question - Very friendly person, interview was more of a collaborative problem solving. Again - they want you to assume things and want to see what and why do you assume certain things when they are not given. Cover all your edge cases -
2) Manager Interview - HR Questions about cultural fit/ Very thorough questions going to details. I think its very important for them to make sure to get a good cultural fit.
3) Data Science question - Again, lot of assumptions to be made and they want to see what questions do you ask and why you make certain assumptions. High level design question mainly.
4) System design question - I was given a very small requirement to begin with, and then gradually the complexity increased and requirements increased and assumptions were made also some number crunching involved for capacity planning.
Overall I would say, very friendly people, interview is more like collaborative problem solving rather than an interrogation. Questions are open ended, for a reason.
From first recruiter call it was approx. 3 weeks. I didn't have trouble getting my choice of day/date chosen for the interviews. 5 * Experience overall.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
System Design Question to ingest billions of live events.
There were 5 different steps:
1. Phone round
2. General interview
3. Coding Round 1
4. Coding Round 2
5. HR round
Getting selected in all these rounds is necessary. Interview was mostly remote via zoom.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Binary Search-related questions. Also, graph- and tree-related questions were asked in coding interviews.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Spotify
Interview
Recruiter emailed me to schedule a call based on his availability with a calendly link. I’ve scheduled according to the recruiter’s availability. Waited for 30 mins for the call at the scheduled time but haven’t received a call. When I emailed the recruiter about the same, he said sorry and asked to reschedule. I did the same and reacheduled accordingly but this time the recruiter again didn’t show up nor responded to my email. Very worse behavior and unprofessional behavior from such a big company.
The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Spotify (Berlin)
Interview
The recruiter asked me why I have a gap year, and how/why I changed countries. I told her because I wanted to advance on my career, learn a new language... And also that my partner got an offer abroad. Her face ~ changed ~. She didn't mention anything about code challenge or anything.
Of course, I was rejected. We all know the reason.
