I applied through a recruiter. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Pinterest (San Francisco, CA) in Sep 2012
Interview
Did a interview test that has to be done in python, you can find the question if you google it. But they give you a week for it, so even if you don't know python you can figure it out.
Then did phone interview, and then a full day onsite.
I really liked the people so it worth interviewing there.
given an arrya of numbers see if you can get to index with 0 in it from an index by jumping through the array using the values in the array. So if you have [1,2,1,0,3] you can get to 0, from 0 by jumping 0, you can get to 0 from 3, by jumping 3 index down to 2 and then jumping 2 index up to 0...
Surprisingly easy compared to what I expected from a company like Pinterest. The technical interview consisted of two coding questions, one about reconstructing routes from unordered travel tickets and another on implementing a Sparse Matrix class. Honestly, I felt a bit underwhelmed. What helped me most in prep was studying the case studies on PracHub, which gave me good frameworks to think through problems. I did get an offer, but I ultimately declined because I was looking for a more challenging environment.
Recruiter call, tech round, onsite and rejection call. They sent me an email about a week after the last onsite and asked me to schedule a call on the same day. I scheduled a call to listen 30 second long rejection notice. A half of interview rounds were horrible. Interviewers were not prepared and arrogant.
1st round technical phone screening with in 1 hour.
One follow up question was asked.
The problem was not too hard, but it requires you finish really fast without bugs.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Leetcode 1564. Put Boxes Into the Warehouse I.
Follow up: what is maximum total box sizes.
Software Engineer applicants have rated the interview process at Pinterest with 3.1 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 49.2% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Software Engineer roles take an average of 20 days to get hired, when considering 118 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at Pinterest overall takes an average of 24 days.
Common stages of the interview process at Pinterest as a Software Engineer according to 118 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 44%
One on one interview: 23%
Skills test: 13%
Presentation: 7%
Group panel interview: 6%
Personality test: 2%
Drug test: 2%
Other: 1%
Background check: 1%
IQ intelligence test: 1%
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