I applied through an employee referral. I interviewed at Gusto (San Francisco, CA) in Jan 2013
Interview
The in-person interview I did at ZenPayroll was unlike any other engineering interview I had done beforehand. Most technical interviews involve solving an algorithmic puzzle on a whiteboard with an interviewer staring at your every move. At ZenPayroll, I was asked to pair program with another engineer on the team on an actual product feature. Not only was it a more practical than most interviews, it also gave me the opportunity to see what it would be like to work alongside an existing member of the engineering team.
I haven't done many interviews in my career, but interviewing at ZenPayroll was the best interview experience I've had.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
I was asked to pair program with an engineer on the team on implementing an actual feature in the product.
I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Gusto (New York, NY) in Jun 2025
Interview
Initial recruiter phone call followed by technical phone screen. Question was a simple data parsing to extract/aggregate JSON data. Interview was friendly, and wrapped up with closing questions. I received a rejection email a week later, with no details.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Given the following JSON data, aggregate statistics based on the request.
I applied online. The process took 6 weeks. I interviewed at Gusto in Mar 2025
Interview
I was surprised by how cumbersome this interview was, several rounds, on top of take home project. It's really rigorous for a company that isn't FAANG level. Honestly a take home and a discussion of a take home is enough technical signal, instead its take home, coding, take home extension live and systems design, plus values and behavioral session. It's a huge time investment for pay and benefits that are not very competitive.
I applied online. The process took 3 weeks. I interviewed at Gusto (New York, NY) in Jan 2025
Interview
medium difficulty, or easier if you look up the q+a's before. one interviewer was late, and had the nerve to mark off points for time. so i did not get a job.
1
Gusto interviews FAQs
Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Gusto with 3 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 43% positive. To compare, the company-average is 50.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 23 days to get hired, when considering 86 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Gusto overall takes an average of 24 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Gusto as a Software Engineer according to 86 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 35%
One on one interview: 22%
Skills test: 17%
Presentation: 9%
Background check: 5%
Personality test: 5%
Group panel interview: 3%
Drug test: 3%
IQ intelligence test: 2%
Other: 1%
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