Akamai Senior Software Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

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Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 3 ratings

3.7

“Difficult” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 3 ratings

Positive	33%
Neutral	33%
Negative	33%

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4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Oct 2010 in San Mateo, CA (took a day)

1. half hour phone interview for experience and some c++ questions.
2. In person interview - 5 people ask questions - c++, algorithms

Interview Questions

write Singleton class

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How to do read write lock?

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Other Details

I got the interview through a Staffing Agency and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a Group/Panel Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Oct 2010 in San Mateo, CA (took 2 weeks)

I was contacted by an Akamai recruiter who found my resume on one of the popular sites. After some chatting with the recruiter I was scheduled for and passed the phone screen. A four hour in-person was scheduled for the following week (4 engineers X ~1 hour each) which went well and consisted of the common questions about data structures, algorithms, design, white board, and personal questions. Four days later I had my second on-site in the same 4 hour format, except this time it was the senior dogs. Here's where things went wrong, while I had great experience with engineers and the recruiter, the top people did not know the answers to their own questions!
One guy asked me to implement a factorial function and once I first talked through my algorithm he told me it was wrong. After a short discussion it turned he actually had Fibonacci numbers in mind. So you don't know the difference between the two? It happens I guess. Then he took my solution looked at it and apparently it differed from what he memorized online, so he said he will verify it later and walked out without even going it over with me.
Here where it gets really good. The DIRECTOR of engineering asked me a Perl question where the use of "split" was required. As I started writing my solution he rejected it on the basis that the outcome of one function call was wrong. I began to argue with him (respectfully) that I was right, to no avail. After 5 minutes he actually had me convinced that I indeed did not do it right which completely threw me off. Today I decided to double check using Perl reference guide and what do you know, I was right about it all along!

While I think I would have enjoyed working with the bright engineers at Akamai I am sure glad that I will not work under superiors that lack basic CS knowledge and cannot solve their own questions.