I applied online. The process took 2 months. I interviewed at ON1 (Portland, OR) in Mar 2025
Interview
The interview process involved 6 rounds over 2 months, which was about 3x as much time as they initially told me it would take. ON1 is very big on culture fit, but it still seemed like they could have shortened the process with similar results.
I applied to a job listing on Wellfound.
Round 1 was a zoom interview with a recruiter who handles most of ON1's talent searching. Conversational, getting a feel for both my skills and personality.
Round 2 was a zoom interview with their VP of Products. Not a programmer, but knows enough about the tech to talk intelligently about it. Similar to round 1, but more detailed.
They assigned me a take-home programming project, and then scheduled a zoom tech interview with some of their senior programmers to discuss my solution. They quizzed me verbally on how I'd tackle a couple different programming challenges. No live programming during the interview. Very comfortable environment--it felt like 3 nerds sitting around over beers.
Round 4 was a combination tech/personality zoom interview with their VP (again) and 3 different programmers. This round felt redundant, as it was very similar to the previous 2 rounds combined. 3 candidates made it to this round.
Round 5 was a half-day, in-person interview in Portland, OR, with many of the same people that I'd already met over zoom. No live coding, but they did show me code on a projector & ask me to debug it live. They had me present a personal coding project that I'd like to implement someday and walk through how that would be accomplished. They quizzed me on how I'd tackle certain technical challenges. The interview was an informal, round table discussion with 5 staff that concluded with lunch.
After they decided that I was The Guy, round 6 was a 1-on-1 zoom interview with their GM. This was just a sniff test for him to confirm that I was a good culture fit.
Everybody I encountered was very friendly and easy going. None of it was stressful. I accepted their offer & started working just over 2 months after my first contact with the recruiter.
Interview questions [2]
Question 1
Demonstrate familiarity with multithreaded programming using modern C++
I applied online. I interviewed at ON1 in Sep 2025
Interview
- Recruiter Call: Recruiter was very pleasant to talk with
- Manager Interview: Management was pleasant. Mostly a conversation about my history and who I am
- Take home practical: 2 Questions
- Technical Interview: This was a review of my practical answers and what my programming experience and thought processes are
- On-Site Interview: Didn't get that far
- Interview with Management: Didn't get that far
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Please write a C++ program that reads a list of numbers from a STL collection and for each number determine if the number is prime. The prime check should occur in a secondary thread and put the results in a STL data structure. Use two worker threads to perform the calculations (one prime number per thread). Please provide a Xcode or Visual Studio project along with source files.
There were five rounds of interviews, which were each ranging from an hour long to more. It was a time commitment and the offer was not commiserate with the amount of work needed.
