I applied through other source. I interviewed at Confluent in Aug 2020
Interview
The phone interview started off well and was positive. It involved of a fairly easy coding problem which I completed within the timeframe. The interviewers were kind and helpful.
The second interview was multiple sessions, mixed between coding, design and managerial.
I had issues where the recruiter couldn't get back within a reasonable timeframe and couldn't figure out simple time differences. They had called multiple times different than scheduled. They then scheduled the interview on the wrong day (less than 12 hours from our conversation) and got mad when I didn't show up, which was quite unprofessional.
Finally during the interview one of the sessions was to implement a solution to a common concurreny problem. I've written very similar solutions to this type of problem in the past and was familiar with different implementations. I wanted to go with a particular implementation but the interviewer had their own idea and wanted to solve the problem in their way. That's fine by me, but I had to change my solution half way to match what they expected which didn't make sense in ways I had tried to explain but they didn't understand (related to the languages concurreny paradigm that they weren't very experienced in.) I felt this reflected as a lack of knowledge from the interviewers part.
Then during one of the design sessions one of the interviewers didn't pay attention throughout the whole timeframe. Towards the end they started talking about an issue completely unrelated to the solution and didn't know why I hadn't done that. When I had an alternatively viable solution. If they had paid attention, it would've made sense, rather than at the last 10 minutes to not understand anything going on. Was a very weird and unprofessional experience.
Other than those issues, the other sessions were mostly positive. The other interviewers were very respectful and knowledgeable in their domains.
Overall, I had expected a lot more from a company like Confluent. I'd probably rate the overall interview process as slightly negative.
I went through a SWE interview process. It was a positive experience. The problems were of medium difficulty, with some harder follow ups. I had two technical interviews and a manager round. Ultimately, I did not receive an offer, but I would reapply.
I went through three technical rounds. The interviews were interesting, but after that, they didn't respond. They didn't provide the results of the process which was not professional on their part.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
1. Implement a LRU Cache
2. Find if a sudoku is valid and also find the correct solution for it.
I applied online. I interviewed at Confluent (Toronto, ON)
Interview
I interviewed for an entry level frontend engineer position. There were 4 rounds - a qualifying hackerrank, followed by 2 technical interviews, and then a final round with the hiring manager.
The process moves quickly, which was really refreshing (many large companies take weeks or months to invite you to an interview). In my experience, recruiting was very responsive, and they let me know ahead of time what general topics to expect for each interview, so there were no big surprises.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I can't give details, but you should know the fundamentals of javascript
