SpaceX Software Engineer interview questions

The full interview process has four stages: first a debugging quiz, then a phone screen, then a programming project, then an on-site interview. The debugging quiz is looking for simple off by one errors, memory leaks, etc. They don't give you anything insanely complicated, just some 10-15 line functions. The phone screen is pretty typical, based on my experience they don't ask you for anything beyond what someone qualified for the job should know. I got to the programming project which I can't say too much about because they make you sign an NDA. It was a 6 hour project which didn't involve any specialized knowledge, anyone with a programming degree or equivalent experience should be able to implement it. Whether or not you can implement in time however is another question, and unfortunately due to poor time management on my part I was not able to complete it.

1. 30 minutes bug finding test. 2. phone screen with a manager. 3. 6 hour coding challenge in C++ This was the worst experience I've had in a long time. I'm a very seasoned C++ developer with many years of industrial-strength C++ coding under my belt. Up to the 6 hours challenge everything was smooth. The 6 hours challenge was a nightmare. The question they give is very easy. But they impose many restrictions that are absurd such as not being able to use C++ standard library at all. This restriction is what makes the challenge take so much time, and it doesn't make the question any more interesting (just long and tiring). The idea is that you write the code and send it to the tester who runs it for you and tells you if you passed the tests or not. I was able to get my code to pass the all the test, and I wrote it very cleanly. Despite all these, They rejected me for a bogus reason that was related to a human mistake I made towards the end of the challenge when I accidently sent the wrong file to the tester (after time) which caused the tests to fail. I immediately sent him the correct file but apparently, that wasn't OK with him so he failed me. Not because I didn't succeed in getting correct code, not because I failed the test cases. But because I accidently sent the wrong file (a rogue copy that I had). Yes, over 6 hours of useless work, on an idiotic exercise with ridiculous constraints that are irrelevant to anything, just to be disqualified for a stupid mistake. Yup, that SpaceX for you guys. You decide if you want to engage with these people. I have made up my mind never ever to apply there again.