October has been a very strange month and thankfully I came out of it better than I expected. I had the chance to meet some great people.

The Good

Swift software had a great idea for the technical phone interview, the team reviewed a project of mine on github and then had me answer questions about it for an hour. They prepared a follow-up assignment adding features to that project.

OKCupid Labs and CrowdFlower both had me pair-program with a team member and work a real bug on their actual codebase. I really loved this, this was the most comfortable for me.

CrowdFlower had me bring my own laptop and gave me an hour to work on a representative problem. They also had me sit with them through a lunch meeting and let me get deep into what they are doing.

Companies that had some some technical question or problem required before applying. I enjoyed the problem with companies that kept the problem to less than 10 minutes of work.

The Bad

• Extended Comp Sci problems
• Geometry problems
• Implement shuffle function
• Design full-stack for 50 million visitors per month (200 ms response time)
• Companies that were disorganized or took three weeks to respond
• Companies that has non-technical screeners try to ask technical questions

The Bat-shit Crazy

Several companies ask to complete excessive homework assignments (4-8 hours). The worst offender asked me to complete a project in a foreign enviroment (Ruby on Rails) and then complete a project. He wanted me to use even though he knew I wasn't familiar with it. I very much liked the company otherwise.

Conculsion

I received a few offers and happily accepted a position with Eagle Eye Networks. It was very difficult to make the decision and even harder to let the other people know. I am very excited to be coding instead of interviewing.