Status: YOE 2.5, BE CS Top 40 CS school
Position: SWE I
Location: Tokyo, Japan
Date: June 1, 2022
Technical phone screen (1 hour):
Karat outsourcing interview, you can do it on weekday or weekend. First 15 min is CS fundamentals short questions (~6 questions, forgot). Then it is a 45 mins live coding round with 3 coding questions (1 easy, 1 medium, 1 hard). I got all 3 questions in graph topics, solved the first 2 with simple BFS. The thrid one I don't have enough time to solve but gave the approach which seems to be correct. HR said solving 2 is enough for passing it.
Onsite (6 rounds all in one day):
Architecture (60 minutes): System design round. First 5 mins are introduction to each others. Then 55 mins using some drawing website (forgot which one) to design a web feature, including tech stack selection, DB schema design, API format (req & res) design, and list all the components and dependencies needed. Pretty standard. Last few mins is for me to ask questions.
Code review (60 minutes): First 15 mins are questions regarding my code review experience in my job, and some BQ. Then 45 mins did a code review test on Hackerrank (didn't know they offer such test, I think it is only visible for companies). I chose Java. The code is around 200 lines, a .java file (backend) and a template language (server side rendering) file which I don't know. The java one has both mistake and bad practices, I wrote around 5 comments. For the template file, I only spot 1 mistake due to insufficient time. Last few mins is for me to ask questions.
Whiteboard coding 1 (60 minutes): Got a search related questions, solved it in non-optional time complexity at first, then spent some time to think how to improve it. Finally found the optimal approach but don't have enough time to implemented it, only explaining the approach (almost finish it). Last few mins is for me to ask questions.
Resume Deep Dive (60 minutes): Ask me to pick 1 interesting project and explain it. A bunch of behaviral questions like what is the challenge I faced, how did I solved it. Too many questions, forgot most of them. They also asked few random questions for each of my past jobs, I think is to make sure I am not doing nothing at those companies. Last few mins is for me to ask questions.
Whiteboard coding 2 (60 minutes): Graph related questions solved with DFS. Able to optimize it after the first try with little modification. Also did a try run to see if the code is working. Left around 15 mins, so interviewers asked some followup, e.g. what should we be careful of when deploying such algorhtm to production..., and as usual last few mins is for me to ask questions.
Close (30 minutes): casual chat to share my feel about the overall process. Asked which round I did well, which round I did worst, any thing else I think should also be included in the process.
Team match: HR share my profile to the only SWE I openings at that time, and had a 30 mins meeting with the engineering manager. The meeting start with manager introduce the team and the projects, then asked me few questions about my career plan, what I am looking for, and let me ask questions. I was also asked to submit my feedback about the team match to HR. I submitted my feedback first, 2 days after. Then got the updates from HR that the team match is successful.
After around 2 weeks of negociation while waiting another offer's result, got my final offer from Indeed.
Offer details: https://leetcode.com/discuss/compensation/2109032/Indeed-or-SWE-I-or-Tokyo
My expression: I think Indeed's process is comprehensive, they have the code review and the closing round which is not so common but very interesting. The engineers are all very nice and willing to share their current projects and view. Seems to have good wlb and eingeering culture.