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

Integral.

Detroit, MI

Initial remote technical screen featuring test-driven development & pair programming, then on-site full day interview that involves pair programming on production code using test-driven development.

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.