Comcast Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Aug 2011 in Philadelphia, PA (took 1 week)

Overall, the interview was a waste of 3 hours, but at least emphasized what I already knew walking in -- that I'm not interested in working in a mega corporate environment. The interview was for the vague title of "Engineer'. In reality the position was for a web developer.

I interviewed in-person with each team member. There were four, separate, half-hour interviews.

First I met with the hiring manager, whom while nice, was a little cool and mechanical. She basically wanted to do a re-run of the phone interview. We talked about my education and the position, and she posed very vague and poorly communicated hypotheticals ("what would you do in this scenario"), which I actually had a difficult time answering because I was truly unclear on what she was actually asking.

Then I met with two Indian men. Their accents were very strong, and half the battle was trying to figure out what they were asking me. They asked pretty easy questions, like, what is grep, what is phpinfo(). Again, it was tough for me to understand them, having to ask them to repeat themselves 3 times was embarrassing.

The next man was very surly, and looked down at the desk the entire time he spoke with me. He asked me absolutely bizarre questions, like if I thought comcast was overpriced, and how I would react if I heard on the news that comcast caps bandwidth and is against net neutrality. It was at this point I knew this environment was a terrible fit for me, and considered getting up and leaving. I told him my opinions, which probably determined right then and there whether I'd get the job.

The final interview went fairly well. He asked me a lot of questions about front-end programming, which I was able to answer easily. He again stared at the desk the entire time he talked to me.

A week has passed, I doubt I'll hear back from them. I accepted an offer at a small company near me, where I think I'll be much, much happier in the long-run.