Coding Interviews

The list of companies is non exhaustive and only lists the companies with jobs in Arbeitnow. For a longer list, please check the awesome hiring without whiteboard interviews guide for Software Developers

A list of companies (or teams) that don't do technical "whiteboard" interviews. "Whiteboards" is used as a metaphor, and is a symbol for the kinds of CS trivia questions that are associated with bad interview practices. Whiteboards are not bad – CS trivia questions are. Using sites like HackerRank or LeetCode probably fall into a similar category. The companies and teams listed here use interview techniques and questions that resemble day-to-day work. For example, pairing on a real world problem or a paid/unpaid take home exercise.

Coding Interviews: Do's and Don'ts

Do's:

  • Evaluate using Pair Programming on a small issue. This can display how the person communicates, comes up with solutions and is able to resolve conflicts.
  • Provide an actual work problem that the person might solve on the job. Most coding interviews have no relation to the job and are pointless.
    • Take home exercises make sense if the software engineer candidate has the bandwidth and time to do it. In this case,
    • Keep it small (couple of hours maximum)
    • Don't expect a fully functional application
    • Allow use of framework / programming language that the candidates is comfortable with, as long as it's related to the job
    • Compensate them for the time (yes, that means money)
  • Come up with a technical problem and have a conversation on how the candidate would solve it
  • Do a code review instead

Don'ts:

  • Live coding is anxious and only evaluates interviewing skills.
  • Solving trivia / algorithmic questions encourages memorization of solutions
    • Everyone knows about Cracking the Coding Interview
    • Tests only knowledge of data structures and algorithms that they might not use on their job
  • Whiteboard interviews are stressful and anxiety-inducing
  • Whiteboard technical interviews appear to favor men over women
  • Leetcode interview questions encourage smart programming solutions, not readable code

Accenture

San Francisco, CA / Los Angeles, CA / New York, NY / Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Technical phone discussion with architecture manager, followed by behavioral interview focusing on soft skills

Airtable

San Francisco, CA; Austin, TX; Mountain View, CA; New York, NY; Remote

Take home project that resembles a problem Airtable solves for. Five hour on-site which includes a discussion of the project, UI design, discussing architectural tradeoffs, and code debugging.

AutoScout24

Munich, Germany

Skype interview followed by home assignment from our day-to-day business and then on-site interview including lunch with a team

Bitpanda

Cracow, Poland / Remote

HR talk, take-home task, tech interview, culture fit interview

Contentful

Berlin, Germany & SF, USA

Multiple interviews, discussion of technical background & live coding challenge (you can use the internet).

ContentSquare

Paris, France

Real-world challenges with open discussions.

Doctolib

Paris, France; Berlin, Germany

Take-home project, on-site interview and work half a day with one of our feature team

GitLab

Remote

A series of video calls, and a coding exercise involving working on a Merge Request that is like a real work task

HeavenHR

Berlin, Germany

Take home project based on the candidate's experience and future responsibilities. Then discussion about the solution

HelloFresh

Berlin, Germany

Take-home project, discussion via Skype or on-site

JustWatch

Berlin, Germany

Take-Home project, discussion on-site

Samsara

San Francisco, CA; Atlanta, GA; London, UK

Phone interview, onsite interview (technical challenges based on real problems we've faced at Samsara)

Smartly.io

Helsinki, Finland

Discussion with recruiter and developers and a pair coding exercises

Stripe

San Francisco, CA / Seattle, WA / Dublin, Ireland / Singapore, SG / Remote

Programming/debugging phone screen + on site with your own laptop/setup and full access to internet, systems design discussion and talk with hiring manager about team alignment.

Verve

London, UK

An intentionally short, take home exercise that mirrors real project work and incorporates code review elements