I applied through other source. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Uber (San Francisco, CA) in Mar 2017
Interview
I interviewed at Uber for Sr. Software Engineer position. The interview was well planned and I felt that the interview questions were balanced and evaluated my coding, design and personality skills equally.
I had two rounds of problem solving where the engineer asked me to solve a problem and then write the code on the laptop and run the code along with few test cases to ensure the code works.
I also has two rounds of general system design where I was asked to design a system and then to talk about the trade offs, limitations and other aspects of the design.
The interviewers also answered any question I had about their role in the company and why they enjoy doing what they do.
The recruiter was also extremely helpful prior and after the interview. I think the best experience I had was actually with the recruiter. The recruiter was supportive and was kind enough to spend time with me on the phone before the interview to explain what each interviewer might ask and which interviews will be purely coding/technical and which ones will be more toward system design. This is really helpful when you go for a 5+ hours interview :). The recruiter was also very open about the Uber situation which was all over the news when I interviewed and spoke about the challenges Uber is having and how they are trying to improve on many processes.
If Uber HR team is reading this feedback I would like them to consider few changes to their interview process
1- I understand that engineers are very busy and perhaps even worn out if the interview is scheduled after they had an all-nighter. Some of the interviewers seemed really tired to me and that left a negative impression on me about the team culture and their workload
2- some of the interview panel seemed a bit arrogant to me. Yes, uber is a very interesting company to work for but you should remember that if you sound arrogant in the interview this will not sit very well with the candidate.
3- please do not come to the interview with beer :) or if you do please offer beer to the candidate..
4- please make sure the candidate is not dragged between conference rooms throughout the interview. It is not very convenient to walk around the campus between interviews.
5- Make sure the engineers know they also have to sell the team and the company to excite the candidate.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
data structures, sorting algorithms, binary trees, general system design
The phone screen lasted about 30 minutes and began with general questions about my background before diving into technical topics. I was asked to solve a DSA question on finding the top K frequent elements, discussing both the min-heap and bucket-sort approaches. Surprisingly, I had recently practiced a similar problem on the algorithm section of PracHub, which helped me articulate my thought process clearly. The interview continued with an onsite where I tackled system design and behavioral questions, and overall, the experience was straightforward and positive, leading to an offer that I happily accepted.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Top K Frequent Elements: given an integer array and integer k, return the k most frequent elements. Walk through both the min-heap approach (O(n log k) time) and the bucket-sort approach (O(n) time), then discuss the trade-offs in time, space, and which one you'd pick for a streaming variant where new numbers keep arriving.
Surprisingly, the interview felt quite straightforward, especially for a senior role. I started with a technical screen, where I was asked to design an Uber Eats cart service. It caught me off guard initially, but then I remembered a specific mock I had practiced on PracHub that was nearly spot-on with this scenario. The final round included some behavioral questions, and although I received an offer, I ultimately decided to decline. Overall, it was a positive experience.
I applied online. I interviewed at Uber (Bengaluru)
Interview
Round 1 - Coding
Question: Count Rectangle-Line Intersections. Given a set of rectangles and a set of vertical line segments, count how many places the vertical lines intersect the rectangle edges (ignoring edge-on-edge overlaps).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Count Rectangle-Line Intersections. Given a set of rectangles and a set of vertical line segments, count how many places the vertical lines intersect the rectangle edges.