Glassdoor is your free inside look at Fog Creek Software interview questions and advice. All 7 interview reviews posted anonymously by Fog Creek Software employees and interview candidates.
Fog Creek Software Interview Questions & Reviews
Getting the Interview 7 Interviews
Interview Experience 6 Ratings
Software Engineer Intern At Fog Creek at Fog Creek Software
No Offer – Interviewed in New York, NY Dec 2012 – Reviewed Dec 19, 2012
Interview Details – Applied online, received an email asking me to fill out some information including my GPA and SAT which I found a bit strange.
Interview Question –
Given a Node with a reference to a child, its next, its previous, and a variable for its value (1/2 tree, 1/2 doubly linked list structure), you have to find a way to flatten the structure. IE, create a doubly linked list but maintain the references to the children.
1 = 2 = 3 = 5
| |
6 = 7 8
|
9
(reference down is child and reference across is next)
this above diagram becomes:
1 - 2 - 6 - 7- 9 - 3 - 5 - 8
but 2 still has child reference to 6
7 still has child reference to 9
5 still has child reference to 8
Answer Question
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Problem with this interview?
Software Engineer Intern at Fog Creek Software
No Offer – Interviewed in New York, NY Oct 2012 – Reviewed Oct 29, 2012
Interview Details – Sent my resume and cover letter to the email listed on their site. Got back a robot response asking for my GPA/SAT scores and some other things. 4-5 days later, got an email to set up a phone interview. The interviewer was friendly, and identified himself as a former intern at Fog Creek himself. He asked me a few questions about my background/experience, and then we got to a coding question using an online shared editor.
Interview Questions
- Implement a function that takes in two unsigned integers and returns a boolean indicating whether you will have overflow if they are added together. Language of your choice. View Answer
- Implement the Java class BigInteger's constructor and add method. Answer Question
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Problem with this interview?
Software Developer at Fog Creek Software
No Offer – Interviewed in New York, NY Jan 2011 – Reviewed Jan 3, 2012
Interview Details – Fog Creek is a take no prisoners kind of firm with questions that will draw primarily from the data structures and algorithms. Be familiar with C as well as with a mainstream OOP language such as Java/C++. Other than that, the interview questions are fairly standard and of the same variety you can expect from Google or Amazon. Be prepared! My mistake was not reviewing enough of the relevant material. Seems like a great company to work for though with a solid grasp on the concept of best practices (thanks, I'm sure, in large part to the prominence of Joel Spolsky).
Interview Question – Dynamically resizing array-backed bounded queue. View Answer
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Problem with this interview?
Software Developer Intern at Fog Creek Software
No Offer – Interviewed in New York, NY Oct 2011 – Reviewed Oct 6, 2011
Interview Details –
I e-mailed in my resume with a cover letter explaining why I wanted to work at Fog Creek. An automated response told me they'd connect me. A day later I got an e-mail to schedule an interview with coding. I heard back two days later with rejection.
I was applying because I thought I could reach the level they wanted by the end of the year (I have 2 years experience with coding but only a month with C++) so it surprised me when they said they wanted to interview now, but the questions were easier (I imagine absolute softball questions for anyone with more experience) than I thought they should have been.
Interview Questions
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Which byte occurs most frequently in an array?
Write a function that returns the byte that occurs most frequently in an array of bytes
Parameters:
Array of bytes
Count of the number of bytes in the array (if you want it) View Answer -
Count the number of times the sequence 'f' 'o' 'g' appears in a char buffer
The char buffer is null terminated View Answer -
Print out the numbers from 0 to 999. If a number is divisible by 3, print a "!" after it. If a number is divisible by 11, print a "?" after it.
Each number should be printed only once, and should be on a new line. View Answer
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Problem with this interview?
Software Developer Intern at Fog Creek Software
No Offer – Interviewed in New York, NY Nov 2009 – Reviewed Feb 12, 2010
Interview Details –
I applied via e-mail. I got an automated confirmation immediately which asked me to confirm some basic information (location, GPA, phone number). About three weeks later I got an e-mail about setting up a phone interview. The phone interview happened three days later and took about an hour. It was a one-on-one discussion with a current software developer (and former intern).
I heard back two days later.
Interview Question – Describe a data model to use as the back-end for a simple text editor. View Answer
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Problem with this interview?
Software Developer Intern at Fog Creek Software
No Offer – Interviewed in Nov 2009 – Reviewed Mar 8, 2010
Interview Details – I emailed my application. I got a response from a robot asking for more details. Eventually, I heard back about a phone interview. The technical question was about data structures for a text editor. I gave an answer about using some linked structure with arrays. I heard back a while later with a rejection.
Interview Question – Describe the data structure you might use to back a text editor. Answer Question
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Problem with this interview?
Software Development Intern at Fog Creek Software
No Offer – Interviewed in Nov 2009 – Reviewed Feb 18, 2010
Interview Details – 2 rounds of phone interviews, followed by on-site.
Interview Question – Write a sudoku solver. View Answer
Helpful Interview?
Yes |
No
Problem with this interview?
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