Post a Salary or Review

Advanced

Ning Inc Software Engineer Interview Questions & Reviews

Post an Interview

Web: www.ning.com | HQ: Palo Alto, CA

Connections

Interview questions and reviews posted anonymously by interview candidates.

Difficulty Rating [?] Based on 3 ratings

3.3

“Average” Interview

Interview Experience [?] Based on 3 ratings

Positive	0%
Neutral	67%
Negative	33%

Ning Inc has 279 connections on Glassdoor

See Who You Know

Hide Filters

1–3 of 3 Ning Inc Interviews

Sort by

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Negative Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Nov 2008 in Palo Alto, CA (took 3 weeks)

It was before the layoffs in January 2009 so their interviewing practice might've been different back then. The overall impression the company was a big mess.

I was approached by an internal recruiter asking what time I can talk. Once I gave the time, I was told my skills were not relevant. After about a week I got an email it was a mistake and now they wanted me to take a test (they also assigned a different recruiter). They provided me with a description and links to the documentation that didn't lead to any documentation. I managed to find some documentation and complete the test. A couple of days later I couldn't find the same documentation because the links changed again.

Then I had a phone interview with some strange questions, with which I didn't have real life experience and I thought I busted it. But they told me I did perfectly, and invited me in person. I had an interview with 2 guys, one of which was never looking at me and always staring at the floor. The questions were more of a general type and puzzles. At one point the eye contact avoiding guy started to argue with me about an algorithm he didn't have a clue about and removed everything I wrote from the board. I didn't really do well, but they were kind of arrogant and it wasn't comfortable. Then I had an interview with another guy, probably more senior. He asked me the same question as the guy on the phone, I told him I already had it but he continued anyway. He refused to take a look at a real life application I had on my laptop. He kept repeating he didn't want to be late for a train, at this point I should've better let him go... Then I talked to some executive over a speaker phone. He asked me to write a very simple loop.

Next day I spoke with the recruiter, they didn't want to continue with me and I would never in my life continue with them. A couple of month later they had layoffs, one of the recruiters was let go and congratulated me I was lucky not to get in.

Interview Questions

You have a database table and millions of transactions. How would you scale it?

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview and a 1:1 Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

3.0

Average Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed May 2009 (took 4+ weeks)

Approached by recruiter that saw my info online. Initially had some communications with the recruiter over email, then had a over the phone conversation. The recruiter arranged a phone interview with one of the engineer, but the interview missed the time due to some work issues that came up the last minute. Rescheduled and completed the phone interview, the recruiter arranged another phone interview with a different engineer, and was rejected after the 2nd phone interview.

Interview Questions

Describe an algorithm that sorts a list of numbers into alternating order, i.e.
a < b > c < d > e....

View Answers (1)

Other Details

I got the interview through a Recruiter and the interview consisted of a Phone Interview.

Helpful Interview?

Yes | No

Inappropriate?

4.0

Difficult Interview

Overall Neutral Experience

Interviewed and No Offer

Interviewed Apr 2009 (took 1 week)

Had 2 rounds of technical phone interviews (45 mins each). The interivewer touched various computer science topics including algorithms, BST, some Java questions. He asked about what I thought about their website. Both of the interviewers are courteous and pleasant.