Some good, some bad along the way (mostly bad now that I actually think of it which is funny because I came in wanting to write a neutral review). My view of Airbnb is generally more negative after this process since there was a lot of hypocrisy against their mission statement, but they're doing cool things so maybe they're a company worth visiting again down the road (they have a 1-year cooldown period). Feel free to use the process for interview practice as their coding assessments are more stringent and would be good practice for other companies.
LAYOUT
0. Recruiter chat
1. Phone screen (2 if they need more data)
2. Onsite, which was 1 system design, 2 coding, 1 experience, 2 culture fit assessments
GOOD
1. Recruiters were generally friendly.
BAD
Just some stuff to watch out for if you don't want to deal with nonsense as a candidate and have other onsites to worry about like I did.
1. It took a couple of months to get from the phone screen to the onsite. Maybe it's better at HQ but this was very slow in Seattle and I wouldn't recommend if you're on a tight deadline. This is probably due to limited headcount which is fair but it doesn't lead to a pleasant candidate experience.
So much for "Being a Host"!
2. All but one of my interviewers had a thicc accent that made communication an uphill battle. As a native English speaker, it's pretty frustrating only having 45 minutes for these problems and spending half the time saying "Can you repeat that?", and clinging on to every sentence fragment you can understand tenaciously. One interview was so bad where I couldn't even explain my thought process for the first 5 minutes (which is good practice), the interviewer made me jump straight to drawing my system on the whiteboard after 30 seconds since we had to speak in a common language of pictures. I'm all for ethnic diversity in the workplace, but you think lots of accents meant diversity? Nah, which brings me to my next point...
All but one of my interviewers were male and East Asian. Nothing inherently wrong with that, I'm sure these employees are great and deserve to be here. But Airbnb literally says on their website that they're all about diversity and inclusion which wasn't the case. There wasn't a single underrepresented minority on my loop (guess that's why they call it underrepresented) and I would hate to be an URM working here.
So much for "Belong Anywhere!"
3. The interviewers were not aware that I was not bringing my own laptop, so there was a lot of fumbling around with passwords, coderpad links, and general logistics that isn't an issue with whiteboards or other companies following the same process. Once again, when you mandate only having 45 minute interviews, and defer from the standard process, you better do your part in ensuring that those 45 minutes are used wisely.
4. It's generally good practice to spend 5 minutes understanding the prompt and talking about your solution before you jump into implementation. Because you only have 45 minutes, almost every interviewer was pushing you sooner than that (closer to 2 minutes average) to start implementing, which is completely opposite of what the recruiter and the rest of the industry tells you. Moreover, when I asked clarifying questions, I even sometimes received a condescending response, "It doesn't say anything like that in the prompt!". Guess you're supposed to just do what you're told. Someone needs to make a decision there and be more consistent on what to tell candidates.
5. My lunch buddy kept casually slipping in negative things about the company during our lunch. Little things like the food being bad. Big things like about the work-life balance. Can't say I felt more enthused about the company after asking questions.
6. I don't want to make ad hominem, personal attacks but I don't have to when it applied to everybody, but pretty much everybody had a very typical techie personality and didn't pass my simple interview bar: "Do I want to spend 8 hours a day with this person and collaborate with them?" If you are a social engineer, uhh I mean sociable engineer, maybe this place isn't the place for you.
7. The interview is on Monday. Recruiter says you'll get feedback by Tuesday. Lol nah that's too easy, how about we make you wait all week, call you first thing Friday, and spoil your happy weekend outlook with a rejection? Recruiters (not just Airbnb) need to start underpromising and overdelivering here.
