I applied through other source. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Databricks (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2020
Interview
Hiring manager reached out about a role with a specialized skillset (front end / design systems). Had a pleasant call with the hiring manager and a recruiter.
The actual interview was a terrible experience. Asked the same leetcode garbage that the rest of the industry substitutes for an actual interview process. The solution to the problem involved recognizing a special property of numbers in the given array. Not much room for collaboration and the interviewer kept saying the same thing over and over again.
If you're looking for a specialized skillset, actually interview me on the specialized skillset.
I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Databricks (Ámsterdam) in Jan 2020
Interview
I applied for software engineer - distributed data system Amsterdam. Did 3 rounds technical interview(one karat), one HM round.
After completing 3 technical round, 1 Hiring Manager round. I received a mail from HR stating that we would like to conduct 1 more technical round of interview before proceeding to onsite. I was still okay with it although I think if you can't judge someone's coding skills from 3 rounds of technical interview, it's better to drop at this stage itself. Now, comes the interesting part, after 2 weeks of no scheduling, I reached out to HR and got an automated mail stating the "Databricks won't be moving ahead with the interview". I mailed the HR again for the feedback and his feedback was it's because of skills mismatch. Now, this is the real disgusting part. After spending 2 months of my energy and time preparing for Databricks, after 3 technical and 1 HM round, you say there is a skill mismatch? I never told anything new in the interviews which is not in my resume.
It was a complete waste of my time and effort. The whole process took more than a month to schedule the interviews. The company that can't do a simple skill match job can't be better at other jobs!
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Vertical Order Traversal
2. insert, remove and getRandom in O(1)
I applied in-person. I interviewed at Databricks (Ámsterdam)
Interview
I was contacted on linkedin by the manager who invited me to interview and know about the company. i had a call with her and two phone screen coding interviews. The interviews were easy to medium and i did quite well. They sent me another invite for another call with the same manager which is weird.
In this interview she asked me weird questions like why you want to join databricks ( i should have answered i don't want yet because i am still trying to discover if Databricks is a good fit for me but i didn't)
I asked her a lot of questions regarding the company culture and the value she gives to the engineers. Also about the future of Databricks . I was very disappointed with the answers which were majority avoiding the questions. I felt like she was upset because of my honest questions which were totally fine to ask from my point of view.
Another thing about the interview process is that HR is not professional at all. Ignoring some of my questions and using a lot automatic replies.
After the interview with the manager they sent me a no-reply email saying my application is rejected ( funny thing was that i never applied). I asked for feedback about the manager interview but totally ignored my email.
I think this company is just trying to pretend being the best place to work, but from the manager chat i completely changed this idea. There is a big difference between the image and the real culture. Maybe i am biased, but this is the impression that i got from the manager chat and the way HR deals with candidates.