Glassdoor Senior Web Developer Interview Questions & Reviews

Interview Details – I was a little nervous going into this interview, as I'd not worked for a company formally for almost two years. I had kept coding, but the technology moves so quickly that I worried that I had been left behind. As I had started my last two companies, it had been well over a decade since I'd last interviewed!

My recruiter set up an interview with a new company in my home town of Sausalito. It was small and very under-the-radar. They weren't even revealing their product. The company was just getting started and was still going by the code name of 'Jagundi'. The process was very informal. After a short (20 minute) phone screening, I was asked to come in to meet with the principles. They were also in the process of moving from San Rafael into new offices in Sausalito.

Ryan, the VP of Engineering met me and led me into the conference room where we chatted for a while. He asked me some basic questions about the breath of my HTML & JSP experience, my experience with CSS, and what I was looking for in a position. He asked me some hypothetical questions about how I would solve problems, mostly involving situations from the travel industry.

Next I spoke with Tim, the VP of Marketing, who was very high energy and asked me how I would go about solving a few problems (again, from the travel industry.) He asked, for example, how I would go about implementing an availability management system for hotel rooms. He also asked how I would go about identifying new hotels with which we could partner if we wanted to grow a company providing travel services. (Though I know very little about the travel industry, Tim seemed happy with my responses, and to be honest, spent most of the time talking himself. (Like I said, he is very high energy.)

I guess I was doing pretty well, because I next went into the CEO's office. Bob was much more casual than I had been expecting, and we had a very relaxed talk about coding, passion, and what I was looking for. He asked me to solve a fairly interesting hypothetical (see question below), and then left the office for a few minutes while I thought about it.

When he came back, he said that they liked me enough to tell me what the company was going to be doing. He described the Glassdoor concept, talked about making the world a better place through transparency and honesty, and talked about how big he thought that this was going to be. Then he sent me away to think about it.

I remember two things from my talk with Bob. First, that he was a great, charismatic spokesman who could really sell the concept. From my previous experience with three start-ups, I knew how important that was. Second, that this was a really interesting idea. Even better, it was *different*. Jagundi/Glassdoor wasn't just doing another me-too product, or even a lets-get-rich-quick product. I believed Bob really wanted to make the world a better place.

And whether he did or not, he sold me.

Negotiation Details – I was in the tall grass when it came to negotiation. During the interview, Bob asked me what I was looking to make. My recruiter had told me not to mention numbers, but it was hard to avoid that when asked point-blank. Feeling like I had the hugest stones in the world, I asked for $90k. Then I went home and did some research, where I learned that 90k was not that much these days for a person with my skills.

The day after my Glassdoor interview, I also interviewed with Restoration Hardware. I was very apparent to me that I was just as skilled as their web staff, and that they were willing to pay a lot for a good coder. They made me an offer on the spot, for $110k. So now I had an offer from Resto Hardware, and what looked like another offer from Glassdoor on its way. Wow, not bad for my first two interviews.

Bob Hohman called me and made me an offer of what I had asked for, $90k. I told him that I had looked at some salary surveys and realized that I should be asking for at least $100k. There was a pause. Then Bob laughed and said "Well, I guess this is what we're looking to accomplish!" He raised his offer to $100k.

The only other negotiation detail was equity. I'd been through enough start-ups to realize that this is much more important than salary, but so did Bob. I was looking for 1%, and he offered me a *lot* less than I wanted. We went back and forth a little. Because I really wanted to work for Glassdoor, I settle for a lot less equity than I wanted, and it's probably the only thing I regret about the negotiation.