I applied online. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Samsara in Apr 2019
Interview
Very simple since they do a quick call to determine if you are interested in doing the technical phone screen, and then they schedule a code share technical phone screen where you speak to one of the engineers there. I list the overall experience as negative because my interviewer went to a very prestigious math/science Uni in the Boston area and interned at a FANG company. He was bored and he couldn't hide it on the technical phone screen. I've had many experiences with phone screens and they generally fall into one of a few categories: 1. helpful interviewer, reached on-site. 2. bored interviewer, still reached on-site. 3. helpful interviewer, failed to reach on-site. 4. bored interviewer, failed to reach on-site. This was in the last category. I think most interviewers, when they know they won't move you onto the next round, should focus on being friendly and helpful for the rest of the technical phone screen. The bad ones sit their like a mute fish, and that's what my interviewer was like. Meanwhile he went on and on about their culture and how friendly it is. Classic case of ingroup/outgroup mentality.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
You start off with straightforward OOP question of designing a class with a constructor. The company makes sensors for shipping and trucks so the class was for a Trailer and a Container. You do some simple functions related to adding containers to the trailer, and then you to a function where they want to know how to determine a Trailer's weight at any given time.
First a HR call - goes into project details, what you're looking for, etc
Got connected to a Hiring Manager for a project deep dive + TPS round within the hour. TPS question not too difficult - not leetcode.
live coding session, create a md to html translator. It was all live with unique requirements making it more difficult than I expected using regex. The interviewer was not personable and it was a very uncomfortable experience
I made it to the technical screen and didn't proceed further. Recruiter call was the usual experience dive, comp discussion, and why you are looking for a job. The technical screen was a string parsing question.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Technical: String parsing. Be comfortable with regex