This process was somewhat painful, but Uber was forthcoming about most of the relevant information, making it less of an issue. I was initially contacted by an Uber recruiter about a possible position at Uber ATC in the Self-driving car group. After some back and forth on LinkedIn, we set up a phone call. The first call, I canceled due to a migraine. When we rescheduled, the recruiter was late calling and said his previous call had run over and he was simply calling to ask to reschedule. We finally connected on the third try. After passing the recruiter screening, I had a call with the hiring manager, who was very nice and I thought the call went very well. When we concluded he urged me to be sure to follow up with the recruiter early the next week, as candidates can "fall through the cracks".
After not hearing anything early in the week, I checked in with the recruiter and was told they would like to move on to an onsite interview and the recruiter would be handing me off to another recruiter to coordinate that. Once we were connected, the new recruiter scheduled his own screening/introduction call with me. That call was canceled the day of for an "unexpected meeting". This, however, was right around the time Uber's news turned bad, so it may have legitimately been an urgent all-hands meeting or something. We were able to connect the next day and start the process of scheduling my trip to Pittsburgh.
For the onsite interview, Uber flew me to Pittsburgh, put me in a nice hotel in the Strip District near the office. I was very excited my first night in town to see a self-driving Uber Volvo go by! The scheduling team had also forwarded an interview schedule describing who I would be meeting with and what time/order they'd be joining. I was scheduled to meet with 5 people with a short ride in a self-driving Uber for a break. I was told this role was 90% management, with very little coding and to expect technical questions that focused more on design than algorithms or gritty implementation details.
My onsite day started at noon with a lunch interview with a junior manager. He was friendly and asked some reasonable technical design questions. My second interview was with an engineer who, in my opinion, went way past the design questions, even getting into such details as how big an int64 was in memory for C++. I did not do well in this particular session, partly of my own failure to present my real knowledge and partly because it covered areas I had been told I could mostly ignore in preparation. I think this is the interview that "sunk" me. My third interview was with the hiring manager's manager, who asked a lot of personnel management questions related to handling conflict and interviewing candidates. Finally, I met with the hiring manager who I'd previously spent an hour talking to on the phone. It was a long day, but nothing outrageous and well within the norm for any Silicon Valley tech firm.
One thing I found very odd was the interview was scheduled to end at 5PM, but there was no dinner planned. Seems like if you're inviting someone to fly in for an interview, you know they're in town alone and should either not schedule meetings right up to the dinner hour, or invite them to have dinner with some member of the interview staff. To add to the weirdness, after the interviews, a recruiter walked me through the office which included a large party to celebrate some internal milestone, but I was not offered any food/drink as we meandered through. Not that I think I should have been invited to participate in a party where I contributed nothing, but it seems they would have known the party was happening and could have scheduled differently to avoid the odd feeling for the candidate. I was sent back to the hotel in a self-driving Uber and told the recruiter would be in touch. You'll notice I only listed four interviews, even though I previously said I was scheduled for five. One was removed from the schedule and others were rearranged with no notice or even momentary address within the process. It seemed like the kind of thing they would at least mention when the "wrong" person walked in the door.
In the middle of the next week, I hadn't heard back, so I checked in with the recruiter and was told he would have an answer by the end of the week. About 2 hours later, he asked if I had time for a call on which he told me the team has decided I was "not sufficiently technical" for the role and they were going to pass. This was obviously frustrating, as I believe I can identify which interview ended my chances, but I was honestly having trouble deciding what I would do if an offer was made due to the recent storm of negative press for Uber and this eliminated the need to make that choice. I gave the recruiter feedback about how his preparation guidelines didn't match the actual interview process and thanked them for their time. Not my favorite experience, but not terrible either.