I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at eBay (Bengaluru)
Interview
I got a call from recruiter who had found my profile suitable on linked in. There were no discussion of remuneration at this stage. I got a briefing of what the role was like and expectations from the role.
Next, I had 3 telephonic screening rounds. The first was mostly around Java and distributed systems, garbage collections and memory leaks. Second was mostly about logical problem solving and some application of design patterns. Third one was about my prior experience and discussion around architecting.
I then, had a full day f2f discussion at their campus. I went through 5 discussions I think. Broadly they consisted of -
- Architecting a distributed load balancer
- Hadoop/ MapReduce, ZooKeeper usage
- Discussion around SPOF in my earlier architectures and how were they addressed
- Developing code for a RW lock with fairness incorporated within it
- B+Tree indexes and contentions (Oracle indexing)
- Row lock contentions in oracle, etc
- NBIO
- TCP RST issues
- Designing a full-fledged Web Server
- Some general Qs on data structure usage and how have I incorporated them
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Developing code for RW Lock and asking me make changes to it (incorporating fairness in it, or priority etc)
I applied through college or university. I interviewed at eBay in Mar 2013
Interview
A on-campus interview. I was told some basic information about the group: a QA group mainly using Java. Asked a easy binary search question and asked me to write a sorting method. I wrote the quick sort. I was told the result will come out the next week. However, after 4 weeks, I received nothing. I sent an email to the recruiting person, she did not respond me.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at eBay (San Jose, CA) in Feb 2013
Interview
I applied for the position through an employee referral and received a call from the recruiter. The recruiter did a basic phone screen and said the hiring manager was excited about my background and wanted to meet me for an informal lunch to discuss the position further. This was a newly created role so the job description and responsibilities were still being formalized.
I met with the hiring manager and one of her team members who would have been a peer for lunch. They were very friendly and easy going. Because it was an informal chat, it didn't feel like the traditional pressure of an interview, although they did ask some basic interview questions. We discussed the position, the needs of the team, the challenges they are facing and how they plan to grow over the coming year and beyond.
I left excited about the opportunity to join a company that was experiencing a second wave of tremendous growth. The people are smart and talented, the work impacts millions of people's livelihoods and they are the leader in the industry.
I then was called back for formal in person interviews with six members of the cross functional team I'd be working with. I met with them over a two day period due to scheduling challenges. Everyone was very prepared with pertinent questions and willing to share information with me about the reality of working for eBay.
Although I did not get an offer (they decided to give the position to an internal candidate instead), I would still strongly consider another role at eBay in the future.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Pretty standard interview questions - tell me about a time you had to re-prioritize multiple projects, tell me about a time you had to tell someone no and how was that handled, etc.