I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Zoom Communications in Mar 2022
Interview
I had two rounds of back to back interview. The first round is for resume, BQ and basic CS questions, the interviewer is friendly. The second round is really awful and I don't even feel like the interviewer wants to hire anyone. Below is the detailed process:
I was given a problem that has a very complicated input format which will need a lot of dirty work in code. And I feel like it is kind of a combination of two questions which leads me to write about 70 lines of code in Java in a non-friendly IDE (codeSignal). The interviewer also seems to be not prepared for this question at all, she didn't try to explain to me about the question which the description itself is unclear and very long, it also has a mismatch between the function signature asking me to write vs the description of input and output. I asked several times and she just pointed me to the problem statement. The whole time of implementation she only gave me 30 minutes including writing my own tests cases, run the code and debug, starting from just showing the problem to me, which I feel like for a problem with so many complicated input structures (Four layers of a Java container which is very dirty) and write it at first time it's almost impossible to read, understand and write all the 70 lines of code in 30 minutes, not to mention the confusion the interviewer and the unclear problem statement costing me extra time just to make sure what it wants.
I have to also complain about the interviewer since she doesn't seem to understand my code as she was wrongly accusing part of my code being wrong for the part of a Java 8 style sort with lambda comparator. She seems to barely know about Java 8 and told me that this part of comparator should return a String since that's what the problem is asking for while in reality the Java Comparator can only return integers.
I have to also clarify about the interview timelines. We spent 15 minutes on the introduction part, then after about 30 minutes's coding I was asked to stop and not to write anymore. There are almost 15 minutes left for the one hour interview which not giving me any chance to write anymore. If the interviewer feels that she could do all the work first time getting this long question with so many confusions, then she must be able to implement this as a feature in daily work in 30 minutes including discussion with PM and writing unit test.
Hopefully people seeing this try to avoid or be careful to interview with Zoom since they expect you to implement features in 30 minutes
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Give you a Map<String, Map<String, List<List<Long>>>>, output a list of complicated strings and no explanation of the second input param of the function in the description or the input/output example, a combination of two LC mediums or a medium and an easy but about 70 lines of code
I interviewed at Zoom Communications (San Jose, CA)
Interview
Recruiter call for screening for college grad role. and then was originally scheduled for 2 different rounds but end up having only one round with 2 interviewers together. First half of the round regarding basic project related questions and git commands for tricky situations
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe a time when you had to work through disagreements?
Nice interview process with many interesting stages. Included testing of language skills as this was a support role across geographies.
Went through to the final round only to be told that the position was no longer being hired for.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Background in telco development, understanding of stuff like SIP.
I applied online. I interviewed at Zoom Communications (San Jose, CA) in Nov 2025
Interview
Had an online assessment on CodeSignal with an option to take the test unproctored (?). Did they expect me to use AI or didnt? It wasnt clear but I did not use AI knowing that despite it being unproctored, they still track every key stroke. Extremely lengthy questions. What used to be easy in the previous years (questions 1,2 ) and medium (question 3,4) are all now medium to hard. Not sure if codesignal adjusted their difficulty or Zoom did. Some of them expect highly optimized solutions even - constantly running into TLE. The questions themselves were lengthy - each 20-30 lines with nuances all over - so you can quickly even skim thru the question. I had a terrible 75 minutes with my confidence completely assaulted. I didnt even bother to find solutions to these problems after the test (which I normally do when I fail a technical interview) because I felt their expectations from the candidate are sky high just because software engineers are now suddenly dispensable commodity like high quality toilet paper.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
DSA?Algorithms? I wouldn't know because I don't have the reading speed of a robot.