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      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      Aug 9, 2017
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Seattle, WA
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Difficult interview

      Application

      I applied online. I interviewed at Instructure (Seattle, WA) in Aug 2017

      Interview

      I had the exact, cookie-cutter experience that seems to summarize every software engineer candidate with this company. I had a pleasant half-hour talk with the recruiter who talked about the products they work on and went over the interview process. I told the recruiter about my experience. One of the things that we discussed was Python. From what I've heard, it isn't terribly difficult to come up to speed on, but I made it clear that I am not currently familiar with it. He said that wouldn't be a problem as long as I would be able to quickly learn it. The next step was the "test". After seeing the first two or three multiple choice questions, I realized that not having any Python experience would make this pointless. I could obviously Google Python syntax and figure out the questions, but certainly not in the time allotted. Seeing this, I skipped forward to the two coding questions. Neither of these questions offered a mental challenge, just artificial timing challenges. The first coding question was the oft-mentioned RPC calculator. Once you realize that this is stack-based, implementing it is trivial. Where I fell in the weeds was when one of the test cases failed. You aren't allowed to know what the test cases are. Even your program output is hidden from you. The idea is you just have to guess what could be wrong and repeatedly throw the pasta against the wall until it sticks. My problem turned out to be that they were using a multi-digit integer for one of the calculations. Normally, RPC calculators use one digit at a time. Fortunately, I guessed this and corrected for it. This is great for a hacker challenge, but not at all a real-world problem. Kind of like how real chefs don't have to deal with what you see on Hell's Kitchen. That left just a few minutes for the second coding question. It was the also-previously mentioned find bodies of water and their sizes. I knew exactly how to solve this (modified flood-fill), and I got it typed in, but ran out of time doing the final debugging and cleaning up. Obviously, I had no time to go back to the multiple choice questions. After I closed the test, I went ahead and finished coding the solution on my PC (it took five more minutes) and testing it. When the recruiter first emailed me, he said "I manage our engineering recruiting efforts for the Seattle office...", so I sent him an email with detailed feedback on the test and the process. The response? One line: "Unfortunately you didn't pass the quiz but thanks for giving it a try. Thanks again for considering us in your search." Ultimately, this process paints a poor picture. If the work environment of this company is reflected by their recruiting process, then instead of doing thoughtful work solving interesting problems, you'll spend your days speed-typing to beat a timer and dealing with arbitrary limitations that have nothing to do with solving the core problem. I'm going to share the coding problems below. To be clear, I'm not under any kind of NDA from this company, and they never asked me not to share this information. That said, knowing exactly how to code the solution won't help you. You just won't have time.

      Interview questions [2]

      Question 1

      Write a program that emulates a reverse Polish notation calculator. The details they give are pretty sparse, but fortunately, I already knew what this was. You can Google how an RPC calculator works. Their spec doesn't say what to do with invalid input, like not ending the input with an operator. Their tests don't have that, though, so it's not an issue. My implementation returned int.MinValue for error.
      1 Answer

      Question 2

      Write a program that first takes an integer N giving both the X and Y size, and then N number of lines. Each line will contain N space-delimited characters, 0, 1, or 2. These characters represent altitude on the map. Zero means water. First, find the bodies of water. A body of water is a group of '0's connected to each other either directly or diagonally. For each body of water, count the number of cells that it occupies. Print to STDOUT the sizes of each body sorted from smallest to largest. Example Input: 5 1 2 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 0 1 1 1 0 Example Output: 1 1 2 4 Google "flood fill". This is just a variation on that. Again, knowing how this works won't really help you. It's just a speed typing exercise.
      1 Answer
      11

      Other Senior Software Engineer interview reviews for Instructure

      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      Aug 30, 2023
      Anonymous interview candidate
      Declined offer
      Negative experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Instructure

      Interview

      There were four phases: screening from the internal recruiter, a meeting with the two managers of the group, and two technical interviews (one for each team of devs). The recruiter accused me of not reading the job spec when I asked a simple question and then doubled back when I asked him for more details about something else. There were two managers: both seemed fine. The technical interviews were just a series of coding challenges that I solved in front of them while they asked questions. At one point, I noticed a dev had a weird zoom background about bugs and system errors. So, I asked him about it. The QA team had created it for him. He didn't seem happy about it. I received a good offer, but the contract had an overly-broad property assignment clause. Basically, everything I do on or off the clock gets assigned to them. The clause acknowledges that this is illegal in some states and makes exceptions for states where it's illegal. You can see what I'm talking about by reading the CEO's employment agreement, which is publicly available. It's more or less the same one they gave me. I found a lawyer to suggest some minor changes, and the recruiter came back asking me who I thought I was and saying that nobody else had a problem with this. I'd heard enough and turned down the offer.

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      How are you about working independently?
      1 Answer
      2

      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      Jan 8, 2026
      Anonymous employee
      Budapest
      Accepted offer
      Positive experience
      Average interview

      Application

      I applied through a recruiter. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Instructure (Budapest) in Mar 2022

      Interview

      1. HR check 2. first round technical - easy coding tasks, free conversations 3. second round technical - same as previous 4. Talk to director - soft skill check. Most directors are easy guys

      Interview questions [1]

      Question 1

      What is the most embarassing part of Node.js?
      Answer question

      Senior Software Engineer Interview

      Jul 20, 2021
      Anonymous interview candidate
      No offer
      Negative experience
      Easy interview

      Application

      I applied online. The process took 4 weeks. I interviewed at Instructure in Jul 2021

      Interview

      Applied on their website, was contacted by their recruiter within 1 week. Had a phone interview then was pushed to an OA. I received an OA assessment. This assessment consisted of basic CSS, JavaScript, and basic engineering multiple choice questions. Afterwards, I was given Evaluate Reverse Polish Notation. Beware that Hackerrank maes you read from STDIN for this OA, because of this I went ahead and coded my solution with Python although I normally code in C++. I passed the Online Assessment, and was contacted by the recruiter the very next day. We then scheduled a Phone Screen. The Phone Screen was done with a team lead, that was a bit on the weaker side technically, i suppose I had high expectations from a basic web dev to understand C++. The interview itself was a number of basic engineering questions, think Web 101. I was then given a Hackerrank console and told to solve. I solved the question without hints, but was somehow rejected without feedback. I posted the question and the solution below. I have 2 oncoming FAANG onsite loops so it was unusual that this happened even though i solved everything they gave me, my solutions were optimal and done without any type of hints. Perhaps I did not pass some hidden requirements? I have received no feedback which is unfortunate, but seems to be the norm in this industry. This was just a training interview for me as I have FAANG onsite loops incoming, and never really considered them, i pushed them on for weeks before taking any of their interviews. This being said i would have liked to see their onsite and do those problems, love me some free mock interviews!

      Interview questions [4]

      Question 1

      Q1: Implement Reverse Polish Notation
      1 Answer

      Question 2

      Q2: Visit idle-tyme.com and implement that type of clock as a function.
      1 Answer

      Question 3

      Q3: Tell me what these server codes mean: 100, 200, 300, 400, 500.
      Answer question

      Question 4

      Q4: What is tree shaking?
      Answer question
      3

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